The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 

Americare: The Prescription for America if Obamacare is Struck Down or Repealed

(This appeared originally in the March 30, 2012 issue of The South Shore Standard) 

This week the Supreme Court heard three days of arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act which is more popularly known as “Obamacare.” The bill that was signed into law two years ago rolls over more than 2,000 pages of clauses, provisions, mandates and regulations. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said at the time that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Many have said that Obamacare is something a lot more than mere health legislation, rather it contains no end of measures to restructure society and redistribute wealth and income. It has also been called one of the largest tax increases in history.

Among the stealth tax increases buried in the bill are a surcharge of up to 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income on anyone not buying qualifying health insurance as defined by the Federal Government; an employer mandate tax of $2,000 for full time employees for companies employing more than 50 workers who don’t offer health insurance; a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for families earning more than $250,000, which also includes profits from the sale of a home; an excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” health care plans that “wealthy” people may have; an increase in the Medicare Payroll Tax; a doubling on the tax for early non-medical withdrawals from health savings accounts; Parents of special needs students will see certain tax breaks rescinded because of a new $2,500 annual cap on Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) which are now unlimited and which many parents use to pay tuition for these kids.

But wait – there’s more – there’s a new 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers for items retailing for over $100.  The ability to deduct itemized medical expenses from one’s income tax has been made more difficult. Presently medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income can be deducted. There is a new level of 10 percent of AGI as of 2013. If a family has had to deal with traumatic or catastrophic care, more of those enormous expenses will now come out of their pockets. There are new taxes on health insurance companies, on drug companies and the list goes on and on.

In selling the plan to the American people, President Obama said that it would bring the costs of healthcare and health insurance down by covering more people and spreading risk. However in the two years since the bill’s passage most Americans are footing appreciably higher monthly bills for their health insurance, whether the expense is being paid by private business, public sector government agencies or individually. Health care costs continue to skyrocket unabated. Insurance companies unabashedly inform their customers that double-digit increases are directly attributable to Obamacare. In public opinion polls, the majority of Americans want to see Obamacare repealed or overturned. Obamacare in great measure cost the Democrats control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.

The tax provisions of Obamacare are not what’s before the Supreme Court however. It is the issue over weather the government can compel its citizens to buy something on the private market. The White House says the bill is important to cover millions of Americans who currently are uninsured. However, the bill would not extend an insurance umbrella over every uninsured American at all. There would still be tens of millions who will still be without coverage even if the bill survives a negative Supreme Court ruling, so, while more people would have coverage, a huge number of Americans won’t regardless.

The Court might strike down the law based on the government forcing people to buy a product from private businesses. For example, some of the conservative justices asked the government’s lawyers that if Obamacare is upheld, what would keep the government from mandating that all Americans buy cell phones for safety or that people buy burial insurance or that people buy broccoli or be compelled to join a health club for the public good? Where would it end? The Administration argued before the court that although their primary defense of the legislation is via the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, at the same time all of this represents a tax or it’s within the government’s taxing power even though it’s not officially labeled as a tax. Trying to have it both ways.

I think the Democrats and Republicans are both right and wrong. The Democrats are right in that Americans need to have some kind of formalized health coverage as we all pay for uninsured people going to emergency rooms in the form of higher health insurance premiums. They’re wrong in that the government ought not force its citizens to buy major medical coverage for everything from pediatric, geriatric or bariatric treatments they may never need. The Republicans are right in that: a) the government should not compel its citizens to buy anything on the private market and b) massive redistributive tax increases should not be bundled in with any reforms of healthcare. They’re wrong in that there needs to me a measure of basic coverage for all Americans.

The answer is for the government to provide what I’m calling “Americare,” which would be analogous to Medicare and Medicaid but for all Americans not on those two existing government plans now. “Americare” would be catastrophic and emergency health care coverage if one were struck by a bus, fell out a window, had a heart attack on the street, etc. It would be paid for by deductions from everyone’s paychecks much like Social Security is today. It would be national and fully portable. It would be a public agency and the premiums would be a tax which is fully and unambiguously within the government’s purview. Anyone desiring health coverage above and beyond trauma care would have to purchase it (or not) from private insurance companies but would not be compelled to do so. The tax burdens on Americans should also be rolled-back to pre-2010 levels and no one penalized for having a lot of coverage if that’s where they want to spend their money.  To bring the cost of healthcare down, Congress needs to enact Tort Reform, imposing caps on malpractice lawsuit awards so as to lower the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors and hospitals and lower the cost of endless litigation. Also, private health insurance ought to be available nationally, across state lines to foster greater competition and economies of scale to drive costs down – and this insurance needs to be completely portable and not tied to one’s place of employment. That would be real and meaningful health reform for all Americans.

 

Neo-Shtetl-ism

(This appeared originally in the March 23, 2012 issue of The South Shore Standard) 

There is an old joke about two Jews who were shipwrecked and marooned on a desert island in the South Pacific. They were stranded there for 20 years and being Jews they were very industrious. They domesticated the wild animals, drained the swamps, tilled the soil. After 20 years they were finally rescued. The ship’s captain came ashore and the Jews gave him a tour of the island. They showed him the fields and flocks and all they accomplished and the captain was very impressed. Finally, they came to a clearing in the middle of the island. In this clearing were three huts. The captain asked, “what are these huts?” One of the Jews answered proudly, “these are our synagogues!” The captain did a double-take and replied, “wait a minute, there are two of you but you have three synagogues?” The other Jew answered, “one I go to, the other one he goes to and the third one, neither one of us would step foot inside.” 

This combination of unity and divisiveness among Jews is as old as time. Even Moses was subjected to it in no uncertain terms. Just as humorously, most Jews want to be president of the company, Prime Minister of Israel but not president of their shuls, which doesn’t stop groups of a dozen shtarkers from starting their own shuls on nearly every corner of densely populated Jewish neighborhoods. Here in The Five Towns I’ve already lost count of the number of Orthodox synagogues and tiny shteiblach (minyans typically of under 75 people held in private homes).

One reason so many shuls get created is for convenience – minimizing the Sabbath walk in poor weather is always a good thing. Another reason is to create an environment where your shul or shteibel is somehow to be seen as more rigorous than the one down the road. There is a full blown competition in many Orthodox quarters to present oneself as more outwardly frum (religiously observant) than the next guy. This all may come as a surprise to non-Orthodox Jews in an era of rampant assimilation and disaffiliation, they along with non-Jews might also be surprised to learn that Orthodox religious and cultural life is far from uniform and monolithic – in fact there are a million shades of gray and in many quarters the closer you are to black the better. Many would also be surprised to learn that most of the differences between the myriad groups of Orthodox Jews is not theological in the least, but rather cultural.

Back in the 60s the Black Panther movement proffered the slogan “black is beautiful,” this could be transposed into many Orthodox circles today where a full-out offensive is underway by many Orthodox Jews to try and steer most Orthodox Jews as far to the right culturally as possible. This takes the form of peer pressure to conform to socio-cultural mores so as to be accepted by the wider community. “Black” refers to the sartorial color of choice among the Brooklyn-centered “yeshivish” and Haredi (sometimes called Hassidic or Ultra-Orthodox) sectors of Orthodoxy. Black is seen as pious, modest and “high-level.” Color alone is not enough, the cut and length of what you wear is also important along with what hat (if any) and which kipa (skull cap) sits perched atop or in front of your head. For women there is a fixation with covering as much of oneself as possible and in not necessarily a flattering way. There is pressure to eat in only certain dining establishments and buy food only from certain markets (even assuming all of your choices are Glatt Kosher to begin with), to decorate your home with certain furniture, use conforming tablecloths, vacation in the same places, send your kids to the same schools and arrange their marriages like in the Old Country. It is an ideology that says the more covered up your women, the higher the dividers (mechitsas) in your shul, the right brim on your Italian fedora, then the more “authentic” you are seen to be. It also deals with issues such as whether one has a television or computers in your home as well.

Just as a black hole in space sucks up and envelops all light, so too is the black Orthodox movement (it should be said it is an ad-hoc movement) making a strenuous effort at trying to consume Modern Orthodoxy. In Israel the “Modern Orthodox” are called the “National Religious” and can be clearly identified by their knitted kippot, their often heroic army service, devotion to Zionism and the state and participation in mainstream life. Here in the U.S. there are no elite units in the Israel Defense Forces, so the way for many to prove just how Jewish they are is to envelope oneself in the black.

The ripple effect of all this rightward running is an atmosphere where Modern Orthodox people are made to feel somehow less devout and less culturally Jewish for embracing aspects of American culture. The supposed “authentic” Jewish culture being flogged by the right wing is actually a case of misplaced nostalgia for the imagined glories of shtetl (small Jewish village) life in Eastern Europe, principally in Poland and Russia from the 18^th and 19^thCenturies. The garb emulates that of the wealthy nobility of those countries centuries ago.  There is also a gauzy Fiddler on the Roof nostalgia for the imagined blissful uniformity and religious warmth of that time and place.

Truth be told, those days in the Pale of Settlement were some of the worst and most oppressive times the Jewish people ever endured anywhere at anytime. Jews were compelled to live in these towns and couldn’t reside elsewhere. They were subject to no end of violent anti-Semitism which culminated in the Holocaust. Grinding poverty, dismal medieval living conditions and a severe lack of economic and educational opportunities led to hopelessness and no future for Jewish children. It’s what prompted millions of Jews to flee to America, Israel and other places. Breaking the bonds of this oppression and helplessness were one of the prime motivations of Theodor Herzl and the founders of political Zionism.

Wearing the garb of Russo-Polish nobility can be seen as a form of “Stockholm Syndrome,” whereby captives start identifying with their captors. How is this “authentically” Jewish? What if one’s forebears didn’t come from Poland or Russia? Before the 18^th Century did Jews dress this way? No way. Rakish black Italian fedoras were unknown to Jews even a generation ago or during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance or to Sephardic Jews living around the Mediterranean or Middle East or to Jews in ancient Israel. Just as the Amish in Pennsylvania have ossified their attire to early 19^th Century fashion, so two have many Orthodox. But this emulation of our tormentors is misplaced. Better to be grateful to America and American culture. No country or society has ever been as good to the Jews as America has been. Religious Jews should be sporting the Brooks Brothers look, not that of Minsk.

A small minority of rigorous Orthodox also are in subconscious envy of right-wing Islam in the way they manage to coerce their women into burkhas and hijabs and coerce adherence to Islamic proscriptions of alcohol, Western culture and the like. They see how whole countries can be compelled and harbor a secret wish to be able to do the same. In Israel there are actually some Jewish sects who have their women attired like Saudis. There is a perception among many Orthodox that somehow all this is to be admired and that these people “are on a high level.”

Many (if not most) Orthodox residents of The Five Towns moved here specifically to have a small slice of the American Dream while maintaining their fealty to the verity of the Torah (bible), combining participation in mainstream American economic and cultural life along with respect for and observance of millennia-old Jewish laws and traditions. They made a choice not to live in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Flatbush or Midwood. They don’t want to be told that guys wearing jeans and a button-down shirt instead of black pants and a wrinkled white shirt makes someone somehow less authentic. They don’t want to hear that wearing a knitted kipa instead of a huge black velvet one makes you less righteous or that using non-white tablecloths makes their children less marriageable.

There is a palpable cultural push-back in progress among the American Modern Orthodox where people are saying “we don’t want to be shtetl-ized,” “we don’t remember 19^th Century Russia fondly,” “we can adhere to the Torah and be Americans too.” Just like Israel’s National Religious (Daati Leumi) have no religious or cultural insecurities, Modern Orthodox American Jews are starting to publicly say that forced cultural conformity has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s level of religiosity and that living in and being a part of the world is not inimical with faith and Torah observance.

 

What’s Possible and Impossible: Why Santorum Can't Get the Nomination

(This appeared originally in the March 16, 2012 issue of The South Shore Standard)

It is a fascinating world when two states in the Deep South with Republican voting populations 75 and 80 percent comprised of Evangelical Christians give victories to a staunch Roman Catholic. It signals a fungibility of religiosity that makes the devout of one faith OK with the devout of another. We’re obviously talking here about Mississippi and Alabama, two states that a generation or two ago would have just as soon not voted than vote for a Catholic but who this year gave pluralities to Rick Santorum.

It’s also interesting that while Evangelicals will vote for a Catholic these days, there is still a reservoir of intolerance for Mormons. In fact, many Evangelical voters have no problems voting for Newt Gingrich who, although Protestant, could not be classified as anything approaching a saint in his personal life. Mitt Romney has had no end of trouble winning in Evangelical districts but that’s not the real story here.

The media trumpets were blaring at full bore on Wednesday about Santorum’s supposed trouncing of Romney. Although Romney came in third in those two aforementioned contests in the heart of Dixie, because they were proportional primaries, Romney picked up a pretty fair number of delegates from those states and wasn’t terribly far behind Messers. Santorum and Gingrich by percentage or popular vote. Most of the media all but ignored the fact that Romney took the Hawaii primary and the contest in American Somoa. The media conveniently overlooked that Alabama’s contest was an “open primary,” meaning that anyone could vote in it whether you’re a Republican or not and that in these kinds of contests Democrats have been going for Santorum in a big way to hurt Romney’s chances of facing President Obama in November. It’s not a true reflection of Republican sentiment.

The Santorum people and the media would like you to believe that this is still a tight contest for the GOP nomination. From an actuarial, statistical and probability standpoint, it probably isn’t. Let’s look at the current numbers and at the races ahead:

All the primaries and caucuses until April 1^st award delegates on a proportional basis. Even if Romney were to come in second or third, he picks up delegates. Right now Romney has a projected 492 delegates out of 1,144 needed to secure the nomination. Santorum has 235. Gingrich and Ron Paul are far behind. Santorum needs resounding victories in the proportional delegate contests and majorities in the winner-take-all states even to catch up to Romney. Is this even possible?

Missouri caucuses this week until the 24^th with 52 delegates at stake. On Sunday the 18^th, Puerto Rico votes in a winner-take-all race for 23 delegates. Romney should win that. On the 20^th Illinois votes for 69 delegates. Look for a Romney win in the urbanized and suburban north of the state. On the 24^th Lousiana’s 46 delegates are up for grabs. Romney should do well there or split fairly evenly with Santorum and Gingrich.

In April, with nearly all races “winner-take-all,” Romney has a royal flush of opportunity. On April 3^rd there is Washington D.C., Maryland and Wisconsin – not Evangelical heartlands. Ninety-eight delegates in play there. On April 24^th there is another “Super Tuesday,” or “Big East Tournament” in the form of primaries in Connecticut (28 delegates), Delaware (17), New York (95), Pennsylvania (72) and Rhode Island (19). Look for Romney to take everything in the “Big East” except Pennsylvania. How can Santorum surmount all that? Not very likely. Other big states like California (172 delegates) and New Jersey will go to Romney. It is mathematically nearly impossible for Santorum to overtake the former Massachusetts Governor.

Romney currently has been winning 54 percent of the delegates on average. He’s also garnered 40.5 percent of the national popular vote in the primaries to Santorum’s 24.9 percent. All Romney has to do is proceed at the same exact pace and come June he’ll assuredly be the nominee.

There is the possibility that Romney won’t be able to win on the first ballot, coming up 100 or so delegates short. This is where the electoral wild card comes into play – listen for talk of a Romney-Santorum ticket, mimicking the Regan-Bush ticket of a few decades back which brought the conservative and moderate-establishment wings of the party together successfully and overcame a sitting one-term Democratic president. You heard it here first.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 

Santorum’s Sweater Vests Leave Republicans in the Cold

(This article appeared originally in the March 9, 2012 issue of The South Shore Standard)

When Adolf Hitler came to power and prominence in Germany, the mega movie star Charlie Chaplin was not amused. You may recall that Mr. Chaplin sported a signature short moustache between his nose and upper lip. Hitler wore the same mode of facial hair. Because Hitler was, to put it mildly, an unpleasant personality, it made it impossible for Mr. Chaplin to continue with his own moustache. This lead to a fabulous cinematic skewering of the aforementioned Mr. Hitler in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Nowhere near as serious as moustaches or Hitler, I’ve recently had to come to terms with the popularization of my default wintertime sartorial style by one of the Republican candidates for President of the United States in the person of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum – namely the sweater vest. Living in the Northeast, from November thru March I’ve been wearing sweater vests in a wide variety of colors for well over 20 years now. While it is a conservative way to dress, thanks to the peripatetic Mr. Santorum, said attire has now become synonymous with a level of conservatism that is far beyond my comfort zone and is forcing me to reconsider how to best stay warm while not being branded intolerant.

Senator Santorum appeals to voters on the far right fringes of the Republican Party – the GOP equivalent of the far left wing social engineers among the Democrats. What both these groups have in common is a desire to remake the country in their own image because most of us, in their view, are incapable of making the right choices for ourselves.

Social issues have become prominent in 2012 electioneering despite all the really serious and important challenges facing our country. Who cares about the future fiscal health of our economy when we can discuss contraception? What does it matter if Iran acquires nuclear weapons when we can hotly debate just how religious someone is?  Why do we need to worry about the cost of filling up our cars when we can hold forth on abortion? Why talk about unemployment when we can debate whether being a Mormon makes you a Christian or not?

Mr. Santorum’s sweater vests are a metaphor that conveys a prissiness on personal status issues that remind people of their great-grandfathers. And not just Democrats. There is a vast body of Republicans out there who don’t want a Democratic “Nanny State” and equally at the same time don’t want a “Fuddy-Duddy State” either. One of the privileges of adulthood is the freedom to make one’s own life choices. A lot of folks just don’t want the government in their bedrooms, their boardrooms, their doctors offices or houses of worship regardless whether the supposed benign intent emanates from the right or the left.

No end of political commentators hold forth on how many Republicans don’t think Mitt Romney is “conservative enough” to get the GOP nomination and that voters are still looking for some imagined “great right hope.”

If the GOP is to have any kind of a hope or prayer to unseat President Obama the party needs to drop social issues like a hot potato. To win in November (and to have a reasonable shot at capturing the Senate and retaining the House), Republican candidates have to remember the Clinton-era mantra of “it’s the economy, stupid.” Democrats are delighted to see the rightward jockeying for the rail going on in the GOP.

The irony of Mitt Romney is that the only way he can become president is if he can pull off another “Massachusetts Miracle,”  the GOP needs to make a case to independent voters (who are a plurality in many states) and to disaffected Democrats that they can fix the nation’s problems, not engage in a Kulturkampf over personal status issues. The pejorative label of “moderate” hurled at Romney by Mr. Santorum and others are precisely the practical qualities needed to attract swing voters and pragmatically lead the country out of economic mire and congressional gridlock. Extreme ideological positions won’t get a Republican elected dog-catcher in a nationwide race.

This is why exit polls in nearly primary after primary show that voters believe that Mr. Romney is the candidate best positioned to run well against the President and possibly beat him. When the issues of “conservative purity” come up, then Mr. Santorum usually prevails. The funny thing about purity is that one can be very alone in one’s purity. There’s nothing pure about running for president, possibly winning and then having to run the country in real life.

After the Super Tuesday primaries this week, the delegate count is as follows: Romney 415, Santorum, 176, Gingrich 105 and Ron Paul at 47. The number of delegates needed for nomination are 1144. Santorum stays in the race because as Bob Dylan wrote, “when you ain’t got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.” Santorum was a second-tier lobbyist before he began his Quixotic presidential quest. Doing credibly well will position him for Gingrich-like book deals, speaking tours and maybe a gig on Fox News like Mike Huckabee. He can’t seriously think he’s getting the nomination. As for Newt, he’s taken a whole lot of money from billionaires, so he has to keep trotting down he track to show he’s not a one-trick pony. He’s also imbued with his own sense of destiny. For Ron Paul? It’s all about the national soapbox.

Most Republican voters want reasonableness, competence and a viable opponent to the President which is why Romney keeps winning the majority of the races. Santorum’s sweater vests don’t give most people that warm and fuzzy feeling, it just reminds them of having to eat their vegetables and do their homework, which is why he can’t win.

Daydream Believer, 1945-2012

(This appeared originally in the March 2, 2012 issue of The South Shore Standard)

When was the last time you believed in daydreams (let alone indulged in them), white knights on steeds or waking up at six in the morning with a homecoming queen beside you?

All that was made possible by an impish British invasion sometimes lead singer named Davy Jones for a manufactured pop group called The Monkees. Mr. Jones passed away on Wednesday, February 29^th and with his untimely demise (he was only 66), so too is yet another window pane shattered in the rapidly vanishing chimera of my generation’s youth.

“We’re just tryin’ to be friendly, come and watch us sing and play, we’re the young generation, and we’ve got something to say,” so composed Bobby Hart and Tommy Boyce for The Monkees TV show theme song. How long has it been since we sang and played? Remember being thought of as “the young generation?” I’m 53, born towards the end of the Baby Boom generation and The Monkees bracketed two periods of my youth – as a young boy in the mid to late 60s and then as a young man in my twenties when The Monkees had a full blown pop resurrection in the 80s thanks to MTV and Nickelodeon. Even the 80s now are decades long since gone, let alone the 60s, and the mists of nostalgia are thinning out and being inhaled less and less.

It can be argued that The Monkees were the first pop group propelled by music videos – as their whole show was basically silly antics bracketed by music. From 1966 to 1968 the group had several top ten hits including I’m a Believer, Last Train to Clarksville, Pleasant Valley Sunday, [I’m Not Your] Steppin’ Stone, A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, Valleri and more. In excess of 65 million Monkees albums and singles have been sold worldwide. The songs were written by such rock luminaries as Carole King, Neil Diamond and the aforementioned Boyce and Hart.

Other big groups of the time were The Beatles (Jones was chosen for The Monkees group and TV show to capitalize on the whole British mop-top thing going on), The Stones, The Who, The Moody Blues, The Zombies and even Herman’s Hermits. The Monkees were unique not only in their genesis on television and their use of TV to drive sales of their records but also in that they were a hybrid band of Americans and Mr. Jones, the Englishman. Jones was an enormous teen idol in his day. In fact, Yahoo Music in 2008 voted Jones “number one teen idol of all time” and Fox News in 2009 put him in the number two spot. Jones was way bigger than Justin Bieber is today and the object of many a then 12 year-old girl’s fantasies.

“Daydream Believer” was Jones’s biggest hit as Monkees front man. American Micky Dolenz would take the lead for many other of the group’s chart-busters. Although the original Monkees TV series would only last for two years between 1966-1968 it would live on for decades in syndication. Many of their big hits would be covered by bands right through the millennium and break the charts yet again.

When John Lennon was killed, we knew there’d never be a Beatles reunion (notwithstanding Paul McCartney’s recent and welcome ubiquity). Many other groups from the 60s and 70s have seen lead singers leave this earth (i.e. Jerry Garcia), assuring that the group sound they created will be seen and heard live no more. The loss of Mr. Jones transcends his place in music or pop culture. It’s really about the inevitable and inexorable passage of time that wreaks its vengeance on us by prodding us along on the bread line of life so that we’re no longer on the cusp or even the middle of things, but being edged out to the periphery. American culture is a youth culture. On television and the movies it sometimes seems that everything and everybody is permanently frozen at 28 years old and it’s just the rest of us on the couch who break 50, 60 and 70.

My father, a WWII navy veteran, just turned 85. His world is vanishing by the thousands each month as those who share his collective cultural touchstones and memories become fewer and fewer. The loss of Davy Jones is like a warning shot across the bow of the Baby Boomers that the world we once so thoroughly dominated in every respect is only given to us on loan – we can only lease a part of any given century or epoch and we will be compelled to yield the floor to those coming up after us.

In October 1968 The Monkees released “Porpoise Song,” from their movie Head

The lyrics (by Carole King and Gerry Goffin) go like this:

My, my the clock in the sky is pounding away
There's so much to say
A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice
And it cannot rejoice

Wanting to be, to hear and to see
Crying to the sky

But the porpoise is laughing good-bye, good-bye
good-bye, good-bye, good-bye…

The Fight for Second Place

(This originally appeared in the February 24th issue of The South Shore Standard)

The only people in New York who probably are not excited by the impending arrival of spring are New York Mets fans. Typically, as the sap starts coursing through the branches of trees with longer, warmer days and as early season flowers start poking their way through the earth in search of sunshine, a baseball fan’s juices start flowing with the herald of “Pitchers and Catchers” reporting to spring training. For Mets fans there has only been dread at the specter of yet another season of manifest mediocrity.

We’ve all been party to the stories of the ongoing litigation between the team owners and the trustee for the Madoff Ponzi scheme for gazillions of dollars, the tottering and precarious financial state of the team itself, being kept solvent with loans from Major League Baseball; the drastic payroll cuts that have whittled the Mets down to nearly Billy Beane/Oakland A’s Moneyball territory in a town where the bling and swagger from The Bronx and their fans makes it impossible to accept all the bad news with complete equanimity. It’s hard not to fall prey to “salary envy” when the Steinbrenners spend as though they had the only Amex Plum card in the world.

To all those who find American League baseball repugnant (particularly as personified by those Yankees), I submit that the 2012 season may not be as bleak and full of despair as the augers of doom would have you believe. There is a sunrise on the near horizon for those willing to “say Hallelujah” and have a little faith, at least until July.

The first “station of the cross” towards Met fan redemption is the clear eyed acknowledgement that the Mets are absolutely, positively not going to win the NL East pennant and that the Philadelphia Phillies  will be the major force in the National League they were the past few seasons (especially with the addition of their new closer, former BoSox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon to their already nearly impregnable stable of hurlers). Giving up the ghost of pennant glory even before Grapefruit League play commences is the first step towards achieving inner peace.

The next move is not looking back and wringing one’s hands over the departure of Jose Reyes. Even if he stays healthy (a prospect which is highly unlikely, not to wish him any ill) the Mets couldn’t afford him. Met fans need to think of themselves as Paul Ryan Republicans, wielding a sharp meat cleaver to baseball salary fat and deficit spending so as to balance the budget. Winning at any price didn’t work for the Mets from 2006 to 2008 when former General Manager Omar Minaya had carte blanche with Madoff money. Winning is a state of mind, not just a state of finance, regardless of what the Yankees do.

Third, the Mets have a very good manager in Terry Collins. Plagued by stars hobbled with injuries for much of last year, he nevertheless managed to keep the team hovering around .500 until around Labor Day. He guided the team to a run of winning 50 of 88 games after a poor start in April and early May. He put the kibosh on the seemingly endless bad karma and prima donna nonsense that permeated the dugout and locker room for much of the last decade.

With the anticipated return of ace pitcher Johan Santana (who will not be the Santana of yore, accept it) we could see maybe 23 starts from him and 12 to 14 wins if he stays healthy. If R.A. Dickey has a season like he did in 2010, if Dillon Gee can put on a performance through the season as he did in the first part of last year, if Jonathon Niese keeps getting better and if Mike Pelfrey can get out of his own way and his own head, the Mets have a reasonable shot at stopping many of the National League sluggers. On the infield, David Wright is still a profound defensive asset at third base, Ruben Tejada at short is no Reyes but he’s no slouch either. He’s young, nimble and full of energy and moxie. With perhaps a combination of Lucas Duda and Daniel Murphy at second base, this should not be a huge defensive gap. Assuming Ike Davis is back on first, when he’s on his game, few balls get past him.

At the plate, with the Mets both lowering and moving in the fences at CitiField, perhaps David Wright will hit like he did back at Shea and start producing homers. Ike Davis was belting it out to the Shea Bridge and the third deck at CitiField even with the old dimensions. If the batting order goes something like this – Tejada as leadoff man (he had a .360 on-base percentage last year – the kind of Moneyball number that makes things happen) could be effective if followed in the two spot by Murphy (who was hot on the bat through much of last season) to put runners on base for Wright batting third followed by Ike Davis in the cleanup spot with Duda batting fifth. Against the Yankees this lineup might not mean much, but against the Nationals, the Pirates, the Braves, the Mariners, Dodgers and Padres it could work. A Gary Carter memorial patch on the uniforms combined with the team’s 50^th Anniversary could also do a lot for morale.

All this adds up to a credible Met run at second place in the NL East if they can win in excess of 82 games. It adds up to a possible Mets season at or above .500 in a year of zero expectations. It adds up to what could be a very entertaining year watching the best Triple-A team in the Majors – a lot of young, emerging talented guys playing for the sheer fun of it for a manager who knows how to keep kids motivated. “You Gotta Believe,” or you can’t be a Mets fan.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 

The Kumbaya President

(This originally appeared in the Feb 10th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Pete Seeger and Joan Baez both recorded versions of Kumbaya in 1958 and 1962 respectively which became a paradigmatic anthem for the civil rights movement and all the utopian causes that were prevalent in the 60s. The song became standard fare at countless campfires at sleep away and scouting camps in the 60s and 70s among primarily affluent, white suburban youth – becoming  so ubiquitous so as to have lasting meaning decades later when using the song’s name as a political reference point. That the song’s provenance is derived from a black spiritual from the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia only added to its appeal among liberals.

In the “Kumbaya” state of mind, everyone sits around together in a harmonious circle, clasping hands in multi-cultural brotherhood, ushering in an era of world peace and unending harmony (literally and figuratively). President Obama is in deep “Kumbaya” mode with the release of his proposed 2013 budget and the cuts he plans to make in defense spending while concurrently dramatically hiking taxes on anyone earning a few shekels.

The nig attention-grabbing “world peace” cut in defense spending, preparedness and deterrence is the President’s initiative to unilaterally eliminate 80 percent of our nation’s nuclear arsenal. This is an offer he’s got on the table while asking absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever from the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else with nuclear weapons for that matter. The President envisions a nuclear-free world, which, while it would be nice, doesn’t take into account the world’s realities.

Reality number one – Russia is ruled by a neo-fascist strongman in the form of Vladimir Putin who yearns for the day when his country will again bestride the earth like the colossus it was during the Brezhnev years. Russia is a country ruled by a man with little to no accountability to his public and who harbors illusions of grandeur combined with policies supporting rogue terrorist-supporting nations like Iran and Syria. Putin would like nothing better than to see an emasculated U.S., the easier to bully us and Europe around.

Reality number two – China is on a fast track to dramatically expand its navy, including the construction of aircraft carriers. They’ve got a space program going that’s not about collecting moon rocks. They’re also an authoritarian regime that backs repugnant nations like North Korea, not to mention the aforementioned Iran and Syria, among others. China holds way too much of our debt. If we become weaker militarily, we risk being reduced to vassal status.

Reality number three – the Islamic Bombs – Pakistan (a highly unstable country as it is) has nukes. Iran is moving at all deliberate speed to create them while developing missile delivery systems that threaten the entire Middle East and Europe. The Obama Administration, sanctions aide, is sitting on it’s hands while uranium gets enriched to a higher degree day by day. The Iranians don’t care about economic sanctions. Iran’s leaders have a martyr/kamikaze complex and wouldn’t care one whit if they sacrificed 20 million of their own people to kill a comparable number of “infidels” in Israel, Europe and elsewhere. At the very least they seek to dominate the Middle East and the essential oil supplies there – putting the West in a choke hold. The President did nothing two years ago to support the “Green Revolution” in the streets of Iran’s cities, ensuring the continued enslavement of its masses to the Mullahs. Iran is Syria’s main sponsor, along with the harbingers of hate in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas.

The President’s proposed 2013 budget also slashes about 100,000 troops from the armed forces. It cuts bases. It cuts aircraft. It cuts ships. It cuts weapons systems and weapons development. The budget proposes $472 billion in cuts over 10 years. More worrisome is the specter of another $600 billion in cuts in defense spending unless Congress can find a way to realize another $1.2 trillion in spending mandated by the Budget Control Act.

While our military preparedness is being gutted the President proposes nearly a billion dollars in various and sundry pork barrel “stimulus” spending to “create jobs,” when none of the enormous prior stimulus expenditures did a thing to staunch the recession.

Further eroding our strategic position are the never-ending deficits – another $1.327 trillion for 2012 with a similar number projected yet again for 2013. The deficit is now over $15 trillion with $5 trillion added to that in just the past three years – a level of government deficit spending not seen since the end of World War II.

The fiscally tottering and precarious nature of the social welfare state being envisioned and constructed by the Administration endangers the nation’s ability to defend its vital strategic interests around the world. And make no mistake, the world is a dangerous place with bad people and evil forces rampant. The bad guys have no interest in sitting around the campfire toasting marshmallows while singing folk songs. They mean real harm to the U.S. and our allies. The U.S. needs to be dominant economically and militarily to ensure world peace. Notwithstanding France and Britain’s foray into Libya last year, no other nation can be counted on to maintain stability, prosperity and civilization itself other than the U.S. The quickest route to global chaos is massive unilateral U.S. disarmament noxiously combined with fiscal policies guaranteed to hobble our ability to buy coffee let alone preserve world order.