The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

        

Fewer emails on the Blackberry is a good thing (left). Barbara Parkins (left), Sharon Tate (center) and Patty Duke in "Valley of the Dolls" and an ode to the departed Three Martini Lunch.

Tech Liberation

I am reveling in a nearly unparalleled feeling of elation and liberation. No, I haven’t won the Mega Millions lottery – it’s almost as big though – for the first time in years I am blissfully unencumbered by nearly 200 nonsensical emails a day across various digital platforms, but, most especially they’re not on my Blackberry.

Yes, tech fans, I’m still using a Blackberry instead of one of those light-speed-fast Star Trek-like Tricorders that are called iPhones or Androids. In the tech word, I’m a semi-Luddite, still preferring a real tactile keyboard (no matter how miniature and no matter that I need to use by thumbs).

Back to the liberation – this week I finally closed-down an email address I’d been using since 1995 or something. This email address was in the hands of nearly everyone on the known planet, including spammers and purveyors of nearly every kind of product or service, including Nigerian “bankers” and Chinese “businessmen.” Yes, I had multiple spam filters on this account and without them the email count would have been stratospheric.

Because this was my very first email address and it was from a former business that I invested 18 years of my life in, I was loathe to let it go, thinking that who-knows-who from who-knows-where and who-knows-when will always be able to find me there. However, I’m happy to report that in the 72 hours since the closure of this email account, the only thing I’ve been missing (and not tearfully) are the endless silly emails that set my Blackberry’s red light blinking every two minutes.

For key contacts from those days and that industry, I just sent-out an email blast informing folks of the new email address. Part of the Blackberry liberation has been from the compulsion to check it as often as I’d been and the drudgery of having to highlight and delete 5-10 emails at a time. I’m convinced that the battery life of the device has been extended greatly, which in a roundabout way, will help make the Earth a greener place.

We live in a 24/7/365 digital age where people demand constant contact and instantaneous replies. I’m of the bridge generation that started working in the late 70s when we didn’t have computers, emails, faxes or even FedEx – a correcting typewriter was considered the epitome of high-tech. If you had an answering machine (tapes, naturally) you were in the same big league as Jim Rockford – but, still, folks didn’t expect you to get back to them in nanoseconds, they were just relieved to be able to leave you any kind of a message at all.

Nearly everything came and went by “snail mail” in those days. Something really urgent could be sent by hand courier across town but generally not across the country or across the world anytime quickly. Naturally, the U.S. Postal Service is reeling from diminished demand when you can email an entire financial presentation of umpteen pages, charts and graphs in the blink of an eye and it can be read even in the palm of your hand.

There was, however, a civility to those days, a pace of working and living that in retrospect seemed a bit less frantic. It was OK to wait a few days for things. It was OK to come home at night and not keep working. It was OK to read or play cards on the LIRR. It was OK to actually take more than 15 minutes for lunch. Now we’re increasingly becoming digitized cyborg-humans, attached viscerally to our instant communication devices. Even in our social interactions, today most folks prefer to send text messages rather than call. If you can’t keep up, then you’re knocked off the grid and become irrelevant.

The other night on the Fox Movie Channel they ran the 1960s classic “Valley of the Dolls” with Susan Hayward, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate (she of the Charles Manson murders fame). The film takes place in that 60s faded color photo where in offices people could say with a straight face and unapologetically that someone was not in, they didn’t know when they’d be back or how they could be reached. Somehow life went on. I’m assuming that by the year 2020, we’ll all have communication and computer transponders surgically implanted in our brains (as was prophesized in another great 60s film, “The President’s Analyst” starring James Coburn) they’ll call it the “iBrain” or something like that and all you’ll have to do is just think it and your message will be sent across the neural net. Kind of makes you yearn for the days of Don Draper and the multi-martini lunch.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Enchanter Par-Excellance.

This was an editorial I wrote that appeared in the December 9, 2011 issue of The South Shore Standard:

Sleight of Hand

The late Harry Houdini was considered the greatest magician of the 20^th Century. Among other practitioners of the black arts who achieved widespread fame are David Copperfield, Doug Henning and Las Vegas staples, Penn and Teller. The chief talents of a great magician are illusion, manipulation, theatricality and bold escapes from seemingly impossible situations. Some magicians don’t know when to stop overreaching and end up pushing the envelope a bit too far as was the unfortunate case with Mr. Houdini.

In New York we have a Governor who believes himself to be possessed of magical powers, and to a certain degree, he probably does. Andrew Cuomo manages to successfully cast spells over ultra-liberal Democrats like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver while at the same time completely hypnotizing Republicans like our State Senator and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

Mr. Cuomo’s latest act of enchantment has been the closed-door, backroom deal to put $2 billion of new taxes on New York’s wealthy while simultaneously throwing a few hundred bucks at New Yorkers earning under $200K.

On December 31^st, the 2009 “Millionaires Tax,” a surcharge imposed on top of already high state income taxes, was due to expire. This surcharge primarily effected those earning over $200,000 a year, shooting state tax rates as high as 8.97 percent for the very rich and even at 7.85 percent for the moderately well-off (those over $300K). While campaigning for office, Mr. Cuomo pledged no new taxes (as did Mr. Skelos and the Senate Republicans) so instead of renewing the “Millionaires Tax,” Mr. Cuomo hit on a plan to completely revamp state income tax rates entirely, technically allowing the 2009 surcharge to expire on December 31^st while “presto!,” creating a whole new set of tax rates for January 1^st. These rates are in fact lower than the pre-2009 rates for most wage earners. Tax rates would have uniformly been 6.85 percent for everyone without the new tax deal. Now, some New Yorkers (those earning under $150K) will see their rates drop to 6.45 percent, with the rates rising to 6.85 percent for those couples earning up to $2 million and individuals up to $1 million threshold.

The bad news for couples making more than $2 mil (and individuals earning north of $1 million) is that their tax rate will now be 8.82 percent – magically marginally lower than the 8.97 percent they’re paying now but significantly higher than the 6.85 percent rate had December 31^st come and gone and no new tax code been put forth and no renewal of the “Millionaires Tax” gone into effect. The Alchemy of this arrangement is that a tax rate hike of 22.34 percent is being passed off as some kind of a tax cut on the expiring “Millionaires Tax” rate, which was meant to be temporary (for just two years) and – “shazaam!,” making the much higher rate permanent.

While cutting anyone’s taxes is a good thing and we do applaud the partial reduction of the much-hated MTA Payroll Tax (whose revenues will be replaced to the MTA out of the state’s general fund in another act of fiscal wizardry), what’s really happening here is that Mr. Cuomo is actually permanently and institutionally raising taxes by $2 billion and doing so by singling out what in effect is a minority group – the 30,000 New Yorkers who as couples earn more than $2 million or as singles earn more than $1 million a year. This dovetails nicely with the Democratic Party’s (and the President’s) agenda of fomenting class warfare, vilifying the well-to-do, scapegoating them and marking them for special treatment.

What is Mr. Cuomo going to do with this extra $2 billion? Why, spend it, of course, on a whole host of feel-good pork barrel programs like $50 million to help inner city youths to get jobs, $1 billion in infrastructure projects, millions and millions for health care (which makes the powerful health care workers unions happy) and education (which makes the powerful teachers unions happy) instead of cutting spending. So, instead of using the $2 billion in new taxes to plug the enormous deficits, Mr. Cuomo is spending it and spreading it around to buy votes from Democratic and Republican legislators.

In the last legislative session, the Senate Republicans were so spellbound that they practically fell all over themselves to prove how reasonable and bi-partisan they can be – allowing Mr. Cuomo to conjure no end of legislation virtually unopposed, giving Cuomo the Younger virtually everything he wanted. Now, the state Republicans are doing more horse trading and “go-along, get-along” politics instead of standing up (like the Republicans in Congress) for core conservative and responsible fiscal policies. Unless Republicans in New York substantively and forcefully differentiate themselves from business as usual, they’ll not have a realistic chance at attaining majority status and control of the state government. They need to offer a clear alternative to tax and spend liberalism. New York Republicans ought to be fighting for a five percent flat tax for everyone, regardless of income level, as a first step towards real tax reform.

On October 17^th of this year Mr. Cuomo said “You are kidding yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed states in the nation, have a reputation for being anti-business – and have a rosy economic future.” Giving most taxpayers a few hundred bucks back a year (a $300 reduction is only $5.77 a week more in someone’s paycheck) is no panacea to make New York a more attractive place economically. Likewise, institutionalizing a tax rate of nearly nine percent for the wealthy on top of capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, real estate taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes and more will only drive more and more movers and shakers – the people who create businesses and jobs – away to Sunbelt states like Florida, Texas and Arizona. The premise of raising $2 billion from the very wealthy is fundamentally flawed as these people flee both the oppressive New York tax regime and/or find clever ways around it, so that Mr. Cuomo’s supposed additional $2 billion in taxes may be a sleight of hand as a lot of this money may never materialize and we’ll only be left with the $2 billion in pork barrel spending and an ever deeper budgetary black hole.

The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

   

Live in Paradise!

Like countless millions of other Americans, I was airborne over Thanksgiving weekend, traveling what a few decades ago would have been considered vast distances to visit family and friends. In my case, I was one of many staring at those TV screens aboard Jet Blue winging myself down Florida way.

When heading toward baggage claim at Palm Beach International Airport, one is met square in the face with a giant billboard and mannequin display urging new arrivals to “Live in a Postcard,” that postcard incarnate being Palm Beach County – replete with ubiquitous palm trees and abundant sunshine. They actually want you to join them in paradise and not just for a visit.

Notwithstanding some of the unseasonably warm November weather up here (and thank heaven for that – last October and November seemed like we were living in Minsk or Pinsk) when I gaze at our bare naked trees, reach for that thick sweater or dig into my wallet to pay our extravagant cost of everything, that welcoming billboard in Florida starts to look pretty good.

And they have more than hype to back it up. First comes the extra hour or more of sunshine on any given day. At 5:30 on Monday it still was light out, (twilight, I’ll grant you, but light nonetheless) leaves were still green on the trees and flowers in bloom. And it was 75 degrees. They have highways without giant potholes or unintentional speed bumps and they have roads with as many as six lanes in each direction with speed limits of 65 or 70 mph. They’ve got no state or city income taxes, a strong homestead exemption if you’re faced with trying times, lower real estate taxes, little to no inheritance taxes and lower sales taxes. No “millionaire’s tax.” No toll bridges or tunnels and generally available free parking.

Housing – yes, you can still spend more than a million on a home there if you want to, but you can also find pretty decent digs for well under $300K. There’s a new development in West Boynton Beach called “Canyon Trails,” with brand new houses starting at $260,000. Condos can routinely be purchased in nice areas for under $150,000.

Food – We have everything here in The Five Towns that you might possibly want to eat – but we pay for it. Go into any Publix supermarket in Florida and you’ll be floored to find that where we take it for granted that a box of cereal will be $5.49, that same box in Florida is $3.89. A case of bottled water here for $6 is $3.99 there. Beer and soda? About 20 percent less. Even the astonishingly good and highly desirable clandestinely imported Mexican Coke (as in Coca-Cola) made in thick glass bottles with real cane sugar and no high fructose corn syrup is a mere $1.29 a bottle there and $2 here. Want to bring home some flowers to spruce up your home? We’ve had an explosion of floral inflation here, with small supermarket bouquets now ranging from $9.99 to $14.99, while the very same sized and just as pretty bouquets in the Sunshine State are $4.99 to $7.99. Ditto on fruits and veggies.

Gasoline? Also less by about 20 to 25 cents a gallon. Heating oil? No such thing. Winter clothes? Also no such thing, unless you like to go skiing on your vacation. Politics? If you’re a Republican drowning in the deep blue Democratic liberalism of New York, Florida is heaven on earth as it seems everyone is a Republican except for old Jewish New York transplants. Oh, and people are more polite. They smile, say “please” and “thank you” and “y’all have a nice day now!”

While on the beach on Sunday, for the first time I saw large numbers of gray and black New York-style pigeons scampering on the sand, vying with the seagulls for bugs and leftovers – these most assuredly were Northern birds who’ve decamped for warmer climes as they looked wholly out of place in the brilliant sunshine and next to the azure waters. I’m sure the gulls were none too happy about it.

Now, having said all this there are some things that are better here – restaurants – our eat-out and take-out food is far superior across the board. Likewise our bagels and pizza. New York wins by a slam-dunk on culture and the breadth and scope of our intelligentsia and frisson of discourse. Our newspapers are better. TV news is better. Our schools are generally better. Nightlife is more sophisticated. People are dressed better and more stylishly. We have real neighborhoods with interesting, solid houses, not just tract developments and gated communities. We have multi-generational family life with deep roots where people know where you come from and often have your back. The richness and diversity of ethnic and religious life is far superior. There is a bland and bleached, homogenized nature to life there which can be mind-numbing.

For a million New Yorkers who fled to the Sunbelt over the past decade, they’re happy to put up with life less sophisticated in exchange for life less complicated, life less onerous, life less expensive and life with more sunlight. As I look out at the pitch darkness of 5:00 p.m. in New York, maybe, as Bertie Higgins sung back in ’82, it would be cool to “live on love and the fruit from tropical trees,”  “ease on down to the Keys” and spend “Just Another Day in Paradise.”