The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

Football as a Metaphor for Americanism and the Giants as the “Home Team” for Red State Republicans

(This appeared on February 3rd in The Huffington Post) 

Two weeks ago more than 50 million Americans watched the New York Football Giants (what’s with the “Football” part of their name anyway? There hasn’t been a “Giants” baseball team in New York for more than 50 years now) defeat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Playoff Game to decide who will face the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on Sunday. This was the largest audience for an NFL playoff game since the 1994-1995 season. The ratings were all the more remarkable given that 16-18 years ago there were far fewer media options, nary an internet and recording a show on your VCR was a monumental pain.

Some ascribe football’s recent huge ratings to its escapist nature, the vicarious violence acting as a salve to the frustrations of an American public over the seemingly never-ending recession and the beer consumed concurrently with the games as a balm to soothe Americans’ anxieties. For three hours or more we Americans get to virtually crush something or somebody whereas in real life many of us feel pretty powerless and besieged. We get to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and garner some reflected glory the next day at the gym or water cooler if our team wins. The vicarious release of repressed frustration is also why violent video games are posting gigantic sales numbers as well. Will the NFL do as well if the economy turns around, I wonder?

Others credit the proliferation of “Wild Card” teams in the playoffs of both football and baseball for ramping-up the popularity of both sports on TV and at the stadiums – professional sports have been termed the “ultimate reality programming,” because you never know what’s going to happen. Wild Cards add uncertainty and unpredictability to be sure, but they also add a measure of unfairness. Take a look at the 15-1 Green Bay Packers and their quarterback Aaron Rodgers, arguably one of the top three QBs in the game today – they do an astonishing job all season with the best record in the NFL and then lose in their first post-season outing to the Giants who had a paltry 9-7 record and only got into the post-season because everyone else in the NFC East did worse. New Yorkers are understandably elated that the Giants managed to win their last five games, including their last three playoff games on the road, but if you lived is Wisconsin, you might be crying “foul.” The same goes for the New Orleans Saints with a 13-3 record and their outstanding quarterback Drew Brees who will also be watching the big game from their couches Sunday evening.

It has come to a point where winning your division, whether in football or baseball isn’t a guarantee of anything – the late bloomers can come and take a whole season’s worth of outstanding play away. So while there is a ragingly unpredictable entertainment value to the Wild Card, the issue of “fairness and equity” (to paraphrase President Obama) may be sorely lacking. New Yorkers are happy the Giants have been dealt a winning hand and all New Yorkers wish them victory over the hated New England Patriots on Sunday but if a New York team were 15-1 or 13-3 and sitting out the big game, I’m sure most of us would not be pleased.

Therein lies the current American conundrum -- it is fair to say that the Giants are the “free market capitalists” of the NFC and the post season is a form of unfettered capitalism that makes football a red-meat metaphor for the American way of life – the Giants as Wall Street corporate raiders or venture capitalists, swooping in on that big deal at the last moment with the inherent unfairness of unbridled capitalism manifest in putting the best product on the market, even if you’re a late entry and irrespective of how long some other team has been slogging away at it. Tell it to Eastman Kodak or Polaroid after digital photography stole their thunder.

The Giants and the NFC also represent conservative, established interests. Most teams in the NFC are old time original professional football teams – kind of like mid 20^th Century blue chip stocks. Teams like the aforementioned Packers and Saints, teams such as the Lions and Eagles and Bears (oh my!). There are even Cardinals, Rams and Cowboys.     There is a Wall Street-Super Bowl index that posits that when NFC teams win the big game, the stock market goes up and when AFC teams win, the market goes down. In this contest Tom Brady and the Patriots represent liberal “Taxachusets” and the Hollywood/Media Elite and the Giants are representing Chris Christie’s New Jersey.

The Giants will be the default “home team” for Red State Republicans and Joe Sixpacks from coast to coast. Brady is a jet-setter married to A-list super model Gisele Bundchen and they live in a $20 million L.A. mansion. The Giants’ Eli Manning is a shy, self-effacing family man living in suburban New Jersey whose biggest celebrity moments are doing Toyota Camry commercials. The Giants are come from behind underdogs while the Pats come with an air of arrogance and entitlement. Sunday’s game will be a clash of the two Americas, a precursor to the big contest in November for the future of the country.

Brushes with Spring

(This appeared in the February 3rd issue of The South Shore Standard)

This week we were treated to some teasingly warm weather, especially on Wednesday when the mercury edged up towards the low 60s. For a day or two at least the heavy coats were put back in the closet in favor of the kind of lighter jackets we typically wear in October and November. Teenagers (who feel both immortal and immune to any potential malady) were running around town in their shirtsleeves.

Winter 2011-2012 so far has been one of the warmest on record, which is a welcome respite to the Siberian/Antarctic snow-buried deep freeze that was last winter. Some environmentalists wring their hands over the prospect of global warming, but from where we’re sitting this season, the world is still not warm enough. In fact we’re happy to take an official editorial position in favor of global warming if it results in many more winters such as this one in the years ahead. Just think of all the unsold fuel oil the Arabs and Venezuelans would have to sit on were that the case! Think of all the rock salt that wouldn’t have to be excavated from the earth to melt ice on the roads. Think of all the potholes that wouldn’t have to be filled (and the wheel alignments avoided by local motorists) and streets that wouldn’t need to be plowed incurring all kinds of overtime expenses – oh, and fewer service delays on the LIRR!

We are exactly 45 days from the first day of spring which this year falls out on Tuesday, March 20^th at 1:14 a.m. You can’t help but notice that the days are getting longer, which brightens everyone’s spirits. Because we’ve had so few days below freezing this winter, it is possible we’ll see some early blooming of spring flowers as the ground wasn’t permafrosted and doesn’t need to thaw out. Spring is called the “Vernal Equinox,” and according to The Old Farmers Almanac “the word equinox is derived from the Latin words meaning “equal night.” The spring and fall equinoxes are the only dates with equal daylight and dark as the Sun crosses the celestial equator. The tilt of Earth is zero (relative to Earth). With no tilt, the North/South Poles are basically straight up and down.”

An early auger of spring is the return of daylight savings time which this year comes out on Sunday, March 11^th at 2:00 a.m. which is a mere 36 days away. This also coincides with the second week of spring training for Major League Baseball, whose return also is a welcome indicator that Old Man Winter is packing his bags and not a moment too soon.

It’s Not My House, It’s You…

(This appeared in the January 27th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Last week I wrote about putting my home up for sale owing in part to the profusion of objections of a karmic nature emanating from various women I’ve been dating in the past 15 months or so of my newfound single hood. If you didn’t read last week’s column, what’s transpired is that these ladies have told me, completely unsolicited on my part (as I’d not asked anyone to move in with me or to get married) that they felt the house had “bad luck” in their minds because of the prior marriage that resided there and that they didn’t want to live in such a hexed abode (to be fair, some of the ladies also had objections to our wonderful neighborhood as well) notwithstanding my willingness to completely redecorate within and without. (You can read last week’s column at http://standardli.com/category/opinion/barbanel/).

The column set off a flurry of comments from friends and neighbors, most of whom were either aghast or appalled or incredulous or all of the above that women such as this actually, in fact, really exist and that if the median age of said women is around 40 (it is) then this explains much as to why they’re still single on the precipice of middle age and the looming expirations of their biological clocks. Many female (married) friends of mine were adamant in telling me that “these are the wrong girls for you” and that “if they aren’t interested in your feelings about the house” and “not willing to upgrade their places of habitation from small apartments” then these women ought to be dropped off by the wayside in favor of other women who would want to make me happy and who also would like to live in a nice place. Some of these friends are on second marriages and related how one or another new spouse moved into an existing house and everything worked out fine.

Other friends and neighbors were upset at the prospect of my possibly leaving the area (I’m not planning to…). Here is what one neighbor emailed me early this week:

“I do not agree with these women’s views.  I moved in with my current wife to her home, which she bought with her ex and they raised two children for a few years before getting divorced. We stayed there until the neighborhood began changing, and not for any other reason.  (The Karma is with the individuals and not the house) You know where we now live and have moved here the same month you did in 2001.  All total, 15 years we have been together and love the neighborhood.  I would not change it for the world.

My conclusion is the women were not for you to begin with.  If they really got to know you the way they should, they would have jumped all over you and moved in lock, stock and barrel.  The right person will come along.  Patience is a virtue.  Our block needs you.”

This profusion of both encouragement and wisdom made me sit back and reevaluate a whole lot of things – I’ve come to the conclusion that my friends are right not only about the house but also probably about the women I’ve been seeing.

The other evening I found myself in Brooklyn’s tony Park Slope neighborhood where small one bedroom apartments can go for well north of a half million bucks and whole townhouses are in the seven-figure stratosphere. Now, these townhouses, often with nary a view and cheek to jowl with one another (in fact jammed up against each other) are narrower, shorter and have a whole lot less air and light and land than my moderately-sized domicile here in The Five Towns. (Let’s not get started on bathrooms). In a “eureka” or epiphany moment (like Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus) while perambulating Park Slope, it dawned on me why the suburbs were such an allure and attraction to our parents and grandparents generation – duh! – it’s about the quality of life! Like the opening theme to “Green Acres:” “Land spreadin’ out far and wide, keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside…”

In the chic precincts of Manhattan and Brooklyn (Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg) people delude themselves that putting up with crime and grime, offensive subways, claustrophobic accommodations, expensive food of every variety, even higher taxes, lack of community and sickly gray pallors is worth paying five to 10 times more to live owing to the “proximity of culture” and “sophisticated” restaurants and nightlife – and – more to the point – to appear hip, cool and with-it even if you’re pushing past the big 4-0 and the youth culture cueing up behind you will soon relegate you to the outer fringes of frisson, because self-image is everything and why be a “country bumpkin” in your mind when you can lord your cosmopolitan suaveness over the rest of America by dint of your zip code and access to trucked-in locavore meats and vegetables and easy access to Zagat’s new restaurant of the week? Why admit that you’re not 25 anymore by “copping out” and living in the ‘burbs?

So, here I am still in The Five Towns and I thank my friends and neighbors for dousing my face with that bracing glass of cold water which made me realize that “it’s not my house, it’s you” and that no end of air, light, space, view and bathrooms just 21 miles from Midtown for a fraction of the cost of those “trendy” urban wards is a good deal indeed. (Oh, and I’m also a pretty good catch given my good values, pleasant demeanor, a full head of hair at 53, slim waistline and lack of wrinkles – and, of course, the house. So, any eligible ladies looking to upgrade their lives and their digs, shoot me an email).

No Newt Is Good Newt

(This Appeared on January 27th in The Huffington Post)

Watching the Republican presidential debates and the masterful performances given by Newt Gingrich, one can't help but be struck by just how bright a man he is -- because it's no small hurdle to be able to overcome a disgraceful exit from politics and public office and before recent polls in Florida, assume the frontrunner position in the battle for the GOP nomination.

Read More Here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-barbanel/no-newt-is-good-newt_b_1241822.html

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

  

In the House of Broken Dreams

(This appeared originally in The South Shore Standard on January 20, 2012)

I’ve been a Five Towns homeowner since October 2001 (well, if you count going to contract, maybe August of that same year) and in looking at all that time, I came to realize that I’ve probably lived in this home longer than I did anywhere at any one stretch for any time in my life. For some reason, although my childhood was consistent with the same people around me, we nevertheless had a peripatetic existence, a few years here and a few years there. Some of that was due to shifting economic circumstances (up and down) and some due to my mother’s wanderlust and what I would call her “house promiscuity,” God bless her, but she was always looking at new, bigger homes and like many Jewish husbands of the day, my father (after some perfunctory protest) went along and we traded up.

I myself, thanks to college and grad school bounced around, spending about nine years all told in two different apartments in Miami during the 80s (your 20s are a great time to live in the sunshine, no less than in your “golden years”) then in Manhattan in the 90s (in three different places) and then finally landing here in my present home after about two years of cramped marriage in an Upper West Side one bedroom (with a spectacular view of the Hudson River, I’ll grant you though). I came back to New York in great measure to pursue “high quality” religiously traditional and intellectual Jewish girls who were in short supply in Miami (although there were plenty of physically attractive women to be sure, kind of like L.A. in that regard) and Manhattan’s Upper West Side was the Mecca for what I was looking for.

Naturally, it ultimately was my fate to fall for someone from the Upper East Side and all the “mixed marriage” implications that it would portend, notwithstanding her 12 years of Jewish day school education. We found my current home while on a weekend visit to my parents here and though it needed a bit of work, it seemed as though this would be a great place to start a family. As you’ve doubtless read in prior columns, this was not to be as the marriage ultimately crumbled and she decamped for the supposed Nirvana of New Jersey (“the West Bank” of the Hudson). So, for more than two years now, I’ve been living in the house solo and as much as I love it and the neighborhood, I think it’s time for the place to go, or me to part from it.

The reality of needing to change my domicile came over me slowly over the past year or so as the different women I’ve been dating in this middle-aged version of single life have, to a woman, expressed in no uncertain terms whatsoever that the prospect of moving into my home would be an anathema to them – and we’re not talking about just one or two people here. And it’s not as though I ever asked anyone to do so or to get married. Unsolicited, I’ve been informed repeatedly that that house is a no-go and non-starter as all the ladies consider it to have “bad karma” as the locus of a previously unsuccessful marriage and/or they consider it to be “another woman’s house,” notwithstanding my offers to redecorate, repaint, re-paper and even re-landscape. Some have referred to it as a “mausoleum,” or a “tomb.” Mind you, many of these ladies currently reside in Lilliputian quarters (typically in Manhattan) where one needs a shoehorn just to access the bathroom, but no one, no matter how cramped their current situation, finds the prospect of this particular home (not of a house in general) to be attractive in the least.

So, in the firm realization that finding lasting love and companionship can only be enhanced by getting into some new digs, I’ve just recently put my house on the market.

Being a creature of habit who hates change, this is a momentous decision but as the old Jewish adage goes, “change your location, change your luck,” so I’m trying my hand at it.

If you know of a young couple starting out, this house is a good place to begin, or someone looking to downsize, the house’s size is very manageable for a couple with occasional visiting relations. The house sits facing the Woodmere Club golf course and has endless golf club, sunset and park-like views. From upstairs you can see a large pond with a fountain. There’s no one in back of the house either due to the expansiveness of a neighbor’s lawn. No end of sunlight. Full dining room, living room with fireplace, den, full finished basement, attic, three large upstairs bedrooms, two full baths, a small bedroom on the main floor with a half bath. Fully decorated and landscaped. Built in 1925 to solid pre-war specs, thick walls and tall ceilings. It also has an eat-in kitchen. Maintained with TLC. In one of the Five Towns’ best neighborhoods. Low taxes. I’ll even throw-in a custom-made sukkah for the back. If you’d like to take a gander at the place, call Lori at 516-410-4210.

***

The Three Wives of King Newt

Electability.

(This appeared as an Editorial in the January 20th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Watching the internecine slugfest between GOP contenders for the Presidential nomination in the upcoming South Carolina primary brings to mind the story told of the violent civil strife that wracked the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 while the Roman legions were besieging the town. So caught up were the residents in their conflicts within that they practically forgot the existential challenge without.

The plethora of televised debates is a healthy thing for American (and Republican) civil discourse – they are highly-rated civics lessons that are engaging ever more Americans in the process, and that’s a good thing. What’s a bad thing has been the demonization of  Mitt Romney and capitalism by contenders such as Newt Gingrich and the now dropped-out Rick Perry, among others.

Under assault has been the time-honored, meaning-of-America ideal of free enterprise, profit and incentive. Romney has been attacked for having been a venture capitalist, for having helped create and lead a private equity firm that invested in new and struggling companies and for not paying subjectively high amounts of income tax, as if these were bad things.

It’s time to remind these pseudo right-wing Republicans that the business of America is business and that attacking Romney for having been a successful investor and entrepreneur is like attacking the American Dream in and of itself. It is as though in their blind quest to win the nomination, many of the candidates have lost all reason and will employ any possible populist pejorative, co-opting the jargon and invective of the far left to use against an economic conservative, which just boggles the mind.

Over the past few years the whole Sturm und Drang of the Tea Party has been lower taxes, flatter taxes and reduced spending. Is it Romney’s fault that the tax code as now constituted taxes investment income and capital gains at lower rates than it does active income? No. Is Romney dodging taxes? No. Is he earning money illegally? No. Did Romney initially pay higher income taxes when he amassed much of his wealth when working in private enterprise? Yes. Why is this even an issue? These are supposed conservatives using the lingo of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the class warfare ideology of the Obama-ites to bring down a Republican and it is wholly inappropriate and even illegitimate. Attacking Romney for being wealthy is disingenuous to the ultimate degree – show me anyone running for higher office who isn’t among the top two or three percent of American earners. Please. And that includes Democrats. Who else has the free time and can afford to run?

Amidst all this populist mudslinging, many of the GOP candidates have forgotten the dire challenges from without, namely, President Obama and the imperative of defeating him in November. It’s not enough to win a right-wing Republican beauty contest appealing to a narrow segment of primary voters, it’s about nominating someone who can appeal to Independents and to disaffected Democrats who can cross over come November and put a new President in the White House. It’s about having a new President who has actually run large organizations successfully, who has managed vast sums of money for others successfully.

Newt Gingrich is an amazing debater and highly eloquent but he is a divisive, polarizing figure who will be the Barry Goldwater of 2012 if allowed to be the nominee. Gingrich is highly and very morally flawed. He carried on a six year affair with his current wife while married to his second wife and he even asked his second wife for an open marriage. He left wife number two just when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He left his first wife right smack dab in he middle of treatment for cancer. He so antagonized Democrats and Independents when Speaker of the House that he all but ensured the re-election of Bill Clinton. He left as Speaker amidst a cloud of House ethics charges. And he’s arrogant. Rick Santorum is inherently decent. A God-fearing family man, but while in the Senate he voted for all the debt ceiling rises and many of the spending increases. He is so inflexible on personal status issues (like that of “choice”) that he will alienate a huge segment of the American electorate, which is primarily moderate to liberal when it comes to these things. He also has the charisma of a slug. Ron Paul has a foreign policy so naïve, so isolationist, so self-flagellating that it makes Obama seem right wing by comparison. And he’s a closet anti-Semite. Every national poll shows Obama defeating all three of these guys by a wide margin. Only Romney comes out ahead of the President in poll after poll. We need someone who has a realistic shot of beating Obama.

No – the way to go in South Carolina and for the Republican Party is to vote for Mitt Romney, get behind him quickly and get on with the business of straightening out this country, the sooner the better. Although we are in a little corner of Long Island, we are endorsing Mitt Romney for the GOP primary in South Carolina and for the Republican nomination in general.

For us, his most recent 30-second TV commercial sums it up best.

“President Obama wants to fundamentally transform America, I stand ready to lead us down a different path. This president has enacted job-killing regulations, I’ll eliminate them. He lost our AAA credit rating, I’ll restore it. He passed Obamacare, I’ll repeal it. I will cut, cap and balance the federal budget. If you believe that the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not a destiny, then I’m asking for your vote. I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”

***

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York…

 – From “The Sidewalks of New York,” 1894 by James W. Blake and Charles Lawlor

Even back in the 19^th Century, Manhattan was considered quite the exciting burg. The biggest city in America for at least two centuries now, “The City” is still the epicenter of American culture and nightlife. There are many Five Towners who trek into Manhattan on a daily basis for their livelihoods and quite a few who travel in frequently for entertainment or leisure – me – I live most of my life within a few mile radius of Broadway in Woodmere, so any trip to Manhattan is an adventure these days.

Since becoming single again, Manhattan has been an increasing part of my down time owing to the fact that more single women reside there than just about anywhere else in the metro area, so Manhattan is “date central,” and dating accounts for no small part of the Manhattan dining and entertaining economy.

For much of the preceding decade (as a consequence of married suburban living, no doubt) New Year’s had been kind of a mellow affair, typically centered around a nice dinner somewhere followed by the spectral televised visage of the stroke-addled Dick Clark struggling through New Years greetings on TV for a few minutes before Ryan Seacrest emceed the dropping of that giant crystal and strobe light ball atop Times Square.

This year, thanks to the affections of someone I’ve been seeing (and as opposed to last year when New Years coincided with the Jewish Sabbath) I was presented with all kinds of happening New Years options in the big town. Now, it should be stated categorically, that no matter how youthful my appearance, I am 53, and generally I’m not running around to all hours of the night and clubbing is nowhere on my radar screen, but for New Year’s, this year, I made an exception.

Resplendent in a black sports jacket and new lavender shirt, the karma of my cool attire enabled me to secure on-street parking within a few minutes of my arrival on the Upper East Side, which is no small feat. With my “De-fender” bumper guard fully deployed, I left the car for the next 15 hours, finally able to imbibe in alcoholic beverages beyond the legal driving limit for a change. This would be a lot of fun, but would exact a high price.

One of the great things about Manhattan New Year’s is that normally pretty women assume extraordinary beauty thanks to careful efforts at blow-outs, makeup and sharp outfits. When mixed with copious amounts of cocktails, the city becomes a whirling dervish of pulchritude in an order, scope and magnitude that one can’t imagine from the cosseted confines of suburban “Married-land.” Because it was unseasonably warm for this time of year, it seemed as though miniskirts were the de rigueur uniform among the comely.

The evening was long on glamour with stops first at a high-end live jazz spot followed by a townhouse party with a live Cuban band and then ending with another West Village basement jazz dive where thanks to the innumerable Jacks and Coke I consumed from 9:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m., the bass player and vocalist were appearing to me as though they were four people instead of two. Not having drunk to that kind of level in perhaps 15 or more years, this was quite an optical revelation. Classic jazz, (of the 50’s and 60’s variety) to be truly appreciated, needs to be augmented with wine or spirits to one degree or another, but this was a bit much.

Thankfully, post 2:00 a.m., the only eye-hand coordination I was being called upon to manifest was hailing a cab (as opposed to operating a motor vehicle – as I never drive buzzed or drunk) which somehow managed to happen. The next morning was where the piper had to be paid. I am proud to say that I’ve not had a hangover in more than a dozen years – proud because I was able to avoid this horrible malady by virtue of being moderate in my consumption of (mostly) wine and beer. Time and distance made me forget just what a terrible self-inflicted affliction a hangover can be and the novelty of this experience after such a long gap was compounded by the march of time – hangovers in fact get far worse when you’re over 40 and terrible when over 50. Frankly, it took me the better part of the next three days to recover from the experience, aided by getting to bed well before 11 on two successive nights and sleeping for the first time in more than a decade past 8:00 in the morning. Vast amounts of bottled water were brought to bear along with bland comfort food (pancakes) to soak-up the queasiness. Now that I’ve had a déjà vu New Years (the kind I might have had two decades ago) I’ve come to the conclusion that nostalgia for days gone by and one’s youth should remain just that – nostalgia and hopefully next New Years I’ll be back to a nice dinner out along with the live televised mummy of Dick Clark letting me know that we’ve arrived at 2013.

***

     

Eye of Newt

(This originally appeared on December 16th, 2011 on The South Shore Standard)

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,--
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

-- Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15)

Shakespeare knew that “eye of newt” was a key ingredient for the roiling cauldron where Macbeth’s witches were conjuring up potions, ghosts and casting spells to help Macbeth attain the crown. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “newt” as “a small slender-bodied amphibian with lungs and a well-developed tail, typically spending its adult life on land and returning to water to breed.”

For those of you who may have been living under a rock these past few weeks (or since the 90s), the word “Newt” has been ubiquitous in the news because former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is now the latest in a never ending series of wannabee Republican Presidential nominees to have attained front runner status in January’s coming caucuses and primaries. Gingrich’s real first name is Newton. Middle name of Leroy.

Most famous “Newts” throughout history typically were “Knutes,” or a derivative with a “K” and no “w” in the mix. In the 20^th Century there naturally was Knute Rockne, the legendary and storied Notre Dame football coach. In the Middle Ages there was King Cnut(e) The Great who ruled England, Denmark, Norway and parts of Sweeden from 1016 to 1035. And let’s look at the Newtons – there was Sir Isaac Newton who created the laws of gravity (among other prescient scientific inventions such as the first practical reflecting telescope and was one of the creators of calculus) and there are many other famous or near famous individuals with “Newton” in their names:

There was Huey Newton who lead the Black Panther Party and two very comely entertainers, the singer Juice Newton and the actress Thandie Newton. A “middle Newton” would be Olivia Newton-John of “Grease” fame. There are many places named “Newton,” among them Newtons in Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin and even New Jersey. There are “Newtons” in the UK, Australia and even Singapore. Two craters, one on the moon and one on Mars are named “Newton.”

Probably and arguably the most famous of the Newtons would be the “Big Fig Newton,” that soft and chewy cookie-cake hybrid that’s been around for well more than a century and manufactured by the fine folks at Nabisco, which is a take on millennia of fig pastries from across the globe. Newtons now come not just in fig, but in fat free fig, whole grain fig, strawberry, raspberry, minis and mutant Newtons in the form of “fruit thins” and “fruit crisps” (whatever they are).

No less of a presence these days as the cookie, former House Speaker Newt(on) Gingrich is sallying forth on his quest to be President of these here United States. His main competitor is a guy named “Mitt.” We have an incumbent named “Barack.” What does it say about the state of our nation that the most likely occupants of The White House all have names like “Newt,” “Mitt” or “Barack?” I submit for your consideration that this is the very essence of the crisis that is plaguing our great nation right now – the utter dearth of Toms, Dicks or Harrys (or even Franks or Bills) who are in serious contention to run this august republic. We have become a country of characters, cartoon or otherwise and these animated avatars offer us mere plebeians the crumbs instead of the cookie, rhetoric instead of gravitas, cacophony instead of symphony.

So help me, as much as I like Newt’s position on Israel (Mitt’s is pretty good too…) I find it hard to take someone seriously who walks around with a first name like Newt. When I hear the name “Mitt,” I think of weekend softball games and the new baseball mitt I bought at Mo’s last year (although to be fair, Mitt Romney did a pretty good job running the Salt Lake City Olympics).

It is a sad and sorry state of affairs that three years into the progressive experiment that is the Obama Administration our great nation has no one better to put forward to slay the Barack dragon than the aforementioned Newt and Mitt. By comparison to all the raging mediocrity surrounding us, the late President Gerald Ford is actually starting to look good by comparison.

We have no end of lizard-like Newts (the reptilian kind) from both parties slithering around the national body politic – Newts who defy the laws of gravity, who sing out of key, who clamor for our attention. The baby-boom leaders are cheap knock-offs compared to those who governed here through most of the prior century – when men were men, women were women, strangers didn’t call you by your first name,  telephones weighed eight pounds and lasted for decades, oil and gas were cheap, we didn’t carry untold credit card balances, we listened to Pink Floyd on LPs and cassettes and drove cars the size of Patton tanks.

We’re weeks away now from the first primaries and 10 months of nonstop campaigning – America is in desperate need of salvation but where will our knight in shining armor come from? Too bad John Huntsman never gained any traction – we need a leader who can speak Chinese. Too bad Michele Bachmann doesn’t get taken seriously. Blame Newsweek’s batty cover photo of her for that. Too bad Rudy Giuliani has no appeal beyond a 40-mile radius of Manhattan. Too bad no one in the Democratic Party is challenging Obama for the nomination like Ted Kennedy did to Jimmy Carter. Too McCain isn’t giving it another go. Too bad Chris Christie decided to stay in Jersey. America – we may all be eating Newtons sooner than we think.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

     

The NY State Capitol Building in Albany, Thomas Edison and his light bulb and the new CFL bulbs (right).

The Ever Burgeoning NY State Budget

One of the reasons why life in New York is so expensive and why government is so dysfunctional is the never ending spending and the constant increases in the budgets at just about every possible governmental level.

Let’s take a look at our state budget as an example. When Mario Cuomo became governor in 1983 the state budget was $42 billion. When he left office in 1995 the budget grew to $60 billion. George Pataki got off to a decent start by actually cutting spending and the size of the budget through 1998 but by ’99 the budget surged and kept growing each year of his 12 year reign to end at $81 billion in 2007. Now you might think with the economy collapsing and the world seeming to cave in after ’07 that the budget would have seen some kind of a decrease, but you would be mistaken. Thanks to Obama stimulus money and the “Millionaire’s Tax” on those earning over $200,000, the budget was able to grow.

During the Eliot Spitzer-David Paterson years from 2008-2011 the budget grew each year, settling in at $85 billion in 2011. The 2011 budget had cuts over 2010 (which was more like $87 billion) but by the time Andrew Cuomo took office we were still at $85 billion. While the 2012 budget is pretty much flat with ’11, projections are for the numbers to reach $90 billion by 2015.

In a masterful “redistribution of the wealth” which would make the Occupy Wall Street and Obama people proud, thanks to a $2 billion tax increase on individuals earning over $1 million and couples earning over $2 million a year (granted, there are only 30,000 of these folks, but these are the people who make jobs and investment happen) about $690 million of that figure will be funneled back to the middle class as tax cuts, some $250 million of the $2 billion is being allocated to reduce the hated MTA tax on small businesses (those firms doing more than $1.2 million a year will still be forking over the dough) and non-profits and $140 million on some business tax cuts, upstate flood relief and an expensive youth jobs program. The remaining billion raised from the wealthy will go into school aid (not to bring down any of our residential or commercial property taxes, why would anyone want to do that?) and more Medicaid spending.

The State Operating Funds Budget, adjusted for inflation, excluding Medicaid (which is a whole different albatross mandated heavily by the Federal government) shot up by 43 percent under Mario Cuomo, 35 percent under George Pataki and only five percent during the Spitzer-Paterson years.

According to E.J. McMahon at the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy “the growth in the state budget will never be tamed unless and until Cuomo and the Legislature address the structural drivers of growth, which include public employee pensions and benefits, costly capital contracting guidelines and the nation’s most bloated Medicaid program.” A great percentage of state spending are transfers to local governments and school districts and unless budgetary restraint and reform is implemented across all local levels, there will be never ending upward pressure from localities for ever more milk from the public teat.

Hardly anywhere in any level of government in New York do we see any kind of surgical cutting of budgets to a point where spending declines in real dollars by appreciable amounts. It is taken as a matter of faith (or fate) that budgets will increase every year. Democrats, generally feel that tax rates aren’t high enough, especially on anyone earning above six figures and “redistributing the wealth” is not seen as a permutation of Marxism but as some right and entitlement by Liberal legislators who’ve appointed themselves as arbiters of how much money anyone with a modicum of success in life ought to be able to retain. This kind of hostile environment towards success and basic unfairness to those who’ve worked hard and accomplished something (and let’s not get started on all the prohibitive “death taxes” that hit your heirs when you pass from this earth) only serves to continue to feed the ever growing populations of Florida, Texas, Arizona and other sunny tax-free climes. New York: Known as a successful exporter of successful people and builder of other states’ economies by sending forth our well-to-do into their midst.

Seeing The Light 

Last week as part of a $1 trillion spending bill, Congress gave a one year reprieve to the Edison-invented incandescent light bulb. Back in 2007, the Democrat Congress passed a bill that would have banned these bulbs as of New Year’s Day 2012. The new Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFL’s) are about five times as expensive as old-time incandescents and although CFL’s consume a lot less electricity, a lot of folks really dislike the light they give off and more importantly, are wary over the fact that CFL’s, while purporting to help the environment, actually contain a highly toxic and dangerous substance – mercury – which if you drop and shatter a CFL, your home becomes a biohazard – especially with children around.

The outright ban on incandescent bulbs is as unreasonable as a ban on alcohol. Let people decide for themselves how to light all or part of their homes and let the free marketplace decide as different formats compete for consumers’ spending. If the CFL is destiny, the incandescent will go the way of the VCR or the 8-Track player, but just like a lot of us like to cook with gas (or even barbeque with charcoal) instead of nuking food, we ought as responsible adults to be able to decide what to put into our bedside lamps by ourselves. Banning these bulbs is like banning candles and is just plain silly. Let’s push for a permanent repeal on the incandescent bulb ban.