Reprinted from Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Raanan Geberer
During the weekend, I happened to see Suze Orman’s well-known financial advice program. The the guest was Ann Minch, who has gotten more than 100,000 hits on her YouTube post describing her one-woman “credit card revolt.”
It seems that the Bank of America, where she had her credit card, suddenly and arbitrarily raised her interest rate from 17 percent to 30 percent. Perhaps the bank had to make up money it lost in bad investments, so it decided to roll the expense onto its credit-card customers — I don’t know. But Ms. Minch, a California resident, was so incensed that she decided to make a video announcing to the whole world that she wasn’t paying her credit-card bill, telling everybody why. “I know it’ll be bad for my credit rating,” she said, “but the banks aren’t lending anyway, so what difference does it make?”
This strategy worked. Soon, Bank of America called and offered to lower her interest rate. Suze Orman congratulated her about this on the show.
As I see it, this development is similar to the spontaneous, unorganized protests that sprang up during the early 1930s at the very beginning of the Great Depression — and is symbolic of the fact that we may be entering such a period now.
At that time, for example, a group of farmers armed with shotguns might show up at a fellow farmer’s place to prevent the county sheriff from foreclosing on the place. Similarly, in an urban setting, neighbors might have gathered in front of an apartment house to prevent the marshal from evicting one of their neighbors. While it’s true that radical groups soon got involved in these types of protests, they were merely following and trying to exploit the popular mood — the discontent was already there.
At any rate, actions like this, although they’re important, are very limited in effectiveness and are only “step one.” Ann Minch is only one person. What’s needed are well-thought-out strategies.
If people are really worried about high credit-card rates, every one of them should deluge their Congressperson, their Senator and even the White House with e-mails and phone calls. They should write letters to newspapers, phone in to call-in shows, post on Internet bulletin boards, hold press conference, stage large protest rallies.
At that point, and only at that point, will the “powers that be” start to really take them seriously. Issues like high credit-card rates are important, but to even get to first base, those who wish to change things have to learn how to play the game.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Insurance Firms' Healthcare ROle
Originally published in "Brooklyn Daily Eagle"
By Raanan Geberer
What’s missing from the debate on President Obama’s healthcare-reform plan?
Any mention of the big insurance companies, it seems. Just about the only time they were mentioned was in Obama’s initial speech on the subject, when he said that “people who like their health insurance won’t have to give it up.”
Both Democrats and Republicans have said that the current healthcare system needs fixing, but they never mention what brought the nation’s healthcare system to its current state.
As I see it, the trouble started back in the mid- or late 1980s, when the insurance companies began to switch to managed care. When I got my first managed-care plan, I was actually happy. Before that, because I took (and still take) multiple asthma medications, I had to pay the full price, then submit a bill and wait until I got a refund for, I believe, 80 percent of the price. Now, I didn’t have to pay anything up front except for a co-payment.
However, managed care had its down side. If someone wanted to go to, say, a neurologist or a pulmonary doctor, one had to go to the primary care doctor and ask his permission. In some cases this was no problem, but many doctors were and are very reluctant to refer patients to specialists except in cases of life-threatening conditions.
According to some reports, which I can’t confirm but can’t find denial of either, in many networks doctors are penalized for making too many referrals to specialists. And according to the “California Physician” web site, in 2007, United Healthcare decided to fine physicians who refer patients to out-of-network doctors.
One thing I do know is that this is true for drugs. For years, my doctor prescribed Lipitor. About a year ago, I began getting all sorts of phone calls and messages about why I should use a cheaper, “preferred” drug. Then I was told by the pharmacist that I had to get a new prescription every single time I asked for Lipitor. Eventually, I got tired of this and asked my doctor to prescribe the cheaper drug — even though some surveys show that Lipitor is slightly more effective.
The more illnesses, prescriptions and/or operations you have, the more likely it is that you will have serious problems with your HMO. A while ago my wife had a sinus operation. She soon received a letter saying that her doctor had never given a referral to the surgeon for the operation (he obviously did, otherwise the surgery would not have taken place). It took about 10 e-mails back and forth to straighten that out.
There seems to be a double standard for criticizing corporations in this country: everyone loves to slam the Big Three auto companies, but no one dares criticize either the big investment banks or the big insurance companies. If President Obama really wants more support for his healthcare measures, he must criticize the insurance companies publicly. Not only will this gain support among the average person, it will focus the spotlight on the ties legislators who oppose the plan have with the insurance companies and how much money they have received in campaign contributions. Then it would be their turn to be on the defensive.
By Raanan Geberer
What’s missing from the debate on President Obama’s healthcare-reform plan?
Any mention of the big insurance companies, it seems. Just about the only time they were mentioned was in Obama’s initial speech on the subject, when he said that “people who like their health insurance won’t have to give it up.”
Both Democrats and Republicans have said that the current healthcare system needs fixing, but they never mention what brought the nation’s healthcare system to its current state.
As I see it, the trouble started back in the mid- or late 1980s, when the insurance companies began to switch to managed care. When I got my first managed-care plan, I was actually happy. Before that, because I took (and still take) multiple asthma medications, I had to pay the full price, then submit a bill and wait until I got a refund for, I believe, 80 percent of the price. Now, I didn’t have to pay anything up front except for a co-payment.
However, managed care had its down side. If someone wanted to go to, say, a neurologist or a pulmonary doctor, one had to go to the primary care doctor and ask his permission. In some cases this was no problem, but many doctors were and are very reluctant to refer patients to specialists except in cases of life-threatening conditions.
According to some reports, which I can’t confirm but can’t find denial of either, in many networks doctors are penalized for making too many referrals to specialists. And according to the “California Physician” web site, in 2007, United Healthcare decided to fine physicians who refer patients to out-of-network doctors.
One thing I do know is that this is true for drugs. For years, my doctor prescribed Lipitor. About a year ago, I began getting all sorts of phone calls and messages about why I should use a cheaper, “preferred” drug. Then I was told by the pharmacist that I had to get a new prescription every single time I asked for Lipitor. Eventually, I got tired of this and asked my doctor to prescribe the cheaper drug — even though some surveys show that Lipitor is slightly more effective.
The more illnesses, prescriptions and/or operations you have, the more likely it is that you will have serious problems with your HMO. A while ago my wife had a sinus operation. She soon received a letter saying that her doctor had never given a referral to the surgeon for the operation (he obviously did, otherwise the surgery would not have taken place). It took about 10 e-mails back and forth to straighten that out.
There seems to be a double standard for criticizing corporations in this country: everyone loves to slam the Big Three auto companies, but no one dares criticize either the big investment banks or the big insurance companies. If President Obama really wants more support for his healthcare measures, he must criticize the insurance companies publicly. Not only will this gain support among the average person, it will focus the spotlight on the ties legislators who oppose the plan have with the insurance companies and how much money they have received in campaign contributions. Then it would be their turn to be on the defensive.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Private ‘Bureaucracy’ Is Why Healthcare Needs Public Option
(Originally published in "Brooklyn Daily Eagle")
By Raanan Geberer
Managing Editor
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
A recent ad on TV placed by a Republican front group raised alarm about President Obama’s new healthcare initiative. Among other things, it asked, “Do you want the freedom to choose your own doctor, or do you want that decision to be made for your by a government bureaucrat?”
First of all, we don’t really make all of our own healthcare decisions now. Maybe some of us, those who can afford fee-for-service plans, do, but the majority of people nowadays have HMO plans. Yes, we do have some decision-making power, but within a narrow range. You have to choose your doctor from within a list of the plan’s doctors, and if your health care plan changes, you have to change doctors, that’s all.
Another case in point is this “primary-care doctor” business. You don’t have the right to decide whether you should see a neurologist, a cardiologist, etc. You have to go to your primary-care doctor, and he or she decides. And your options are even more limited if you want mental-health care. I have even heard that in some instances doctors are penalized if they refer too many patients to specialists.
Who makes these decisions? Bureaucrats! No, not government bureaucrats, but bureaucrats in the offices of the healthcare offices. Moreover, those bureaucrats probably have very little, if any, medical training. So what is a “bureaucrat?” Among the definitions of “bureaucrat” given by Wikipedia are:
1. A hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed among actors, and
2. Formal and informal networks that connect organizational actors to one another through flows of information and patterns of cooperation.
Government agencies aren’t the only “bureaucracies,” not by a long shot. They’re not even the only inefficient bureaucracies! Enron had a bureaucracy, General Motors had a bureaucracy, Countrywide Mortgages had a bureaucracy, Bear Stearns had a bureaucracy, Chrysler had a bureaucracy, Citicorp had a bureaucracy, CVS and Rite Aid have bureaucracies, and the big insurance companies have their bureaucracies.
If, as corporate lobbyists and the Republican leadership would have you believe, only government bureaucrats were inefficient, General Motors would still be an up-and-coming company, mortgage companies would have rejected questionable mortgages out-of-hand, banks would still be making loans, and you wouldn’t have a glut of chain drugstores in some areas and none at all in other areas.
Yes, government bureaucrats are often inefficient. But to single out government as being the sole perpetrator of inefficiency is just a cover-up for the faults of the insurance companies’ own bureaucrats.
By Raanan Geberer
Managing Editor
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
A recent ad on TV placed by a Republican front group raised alarm about President Obama’s new healthcare initiative. Among other things, it asked, “Do you want the freedom to choose your own doctor, or do you want that decision to be made for your by a government bureaucrat?”
First of all, we don’t really make all of our own healthcare decisions now. Maybe some of us, those who can afford fee-for-service plans, do, but the majority of people nowadays have HMO plans. Yes, we do have some decision-making power, but within a narrow range. You have to choose your doctor from within a list of the plan’s doctors, and if your health care plan changes, you have to change doctors, that’s all.
Another case in point is this “primary-care doctor” business. You don’t have the right to decide whether you should see a neurologist, a cardiologist, etc. You have to go to your primary-care doctor, and he or she decides. And your options are even more limited if you want mental-health care. I have even heard that in some instances doctors are penalized if they refer too many patients to specialists.
Who makes these decisions? Bureaucrats! No, not government bureaucrats, but bureaucrats in the offices of the healthcare offices. Moreover, those bureaucrats probably have very little, if any, medical training. So what is a “bureaucrat?” Among the definitions of “bureaucrat” given by Wikipedia are:
1. A hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are differentially distributed among actors, and
2. Formal and informal networks that connect organizational actors to one another through flows of information and patterns of cooperation.
Government agencies aren’t the only “bureaucracies,” not by a long shot. They’re not even the only inefficient bureaucracies! Enron had a bureaucracy, General Motors had a bureaucracy, Countrywide Mortgages had a bureaucracy, Bear Stearns had a bureaucracy, Chrysler had a bureaucracy, Citicorp had a bureaucracy, CVS and Rite Aid have bureaucracies, and the big insurance companies have their bureaucracies.
If, as corporate lobbyists and the Republican leadership would have you believe, only government bureaucrats were inefficient, General Motors would still be an up-and-coming company, mortgage companies would have rejected questionable mortgages out-of-hand, banks would still be making loans, and you wouldn’t have a glut of chain drugstores in some areas and none at all in other areas.
Yes, government bureaucrats are often inefficient. But to single out government as being the sole perpetrator of inefficiency is just a cover-up for the faults of the insurance companies’ own bureaucrats.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The High Line and Its Disappointments
By Raanan Geberer
I visited the well-publicized High Line in Lower Manhattan this past weekend, the first weekend it was open to the public.
The High Line, as most people know, is a former freight rail line that was built in the mid-1930s and served the Meat Packing District until 1980. One of the most unusual features of the High Line is the fact that it goes right through several industrial high-rises — this is where freight, chiefly carcasses of cattle, was unloaded. Here and there, one also sees a spur that once led to a nearby factory, like the former Nabisco factory that now houses the Chelsea Market. The neighborhood is still dominated by industrial buildings, even though many of them now house art galleries.
During the 1990s three local residents came up with an idea for an elevated park, inspired by the “Promenade Plantée” in Paris. They organized themselves as “Friends of the High Line” in the same way that during the 1980s some Brooklyn Heights residents organized themselves as the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition.
Throughout the ’90s, a debate took place between the Friends of the High Line and the owners of nearby parking garages and warehouses, who wanted the rusting, potentially dangerous elevated railroad structure torn down. After Mayor Bloomberg took office, the Friends of the High Line won and construction began. So far, the first section, from Gansevoort Street in the Village to 20th Street, is complete. A second section, extending north to 30th Street, is scheduled to open next year, and tree planting there has already begun. A third section, from 30th to 34th streets, is also planned, but funding is in doubt due to the budget crunch.
The High Line itself is very beautiful, with many varieties of colorful plants and flowers, benches, and an elevator for those who don’t want to navigate the staircases at either end. In some places the old railroad tracks survive, having been incorporated into the design, but new railroad ties of dark wood have replaced the older, rotting ones. At various points, volunteers answer questions by park-goers, many of whom come from as far away as Seattle. We saw several “upscale” food carts, but they are unobtrusive and you have to look for them.
As always in Bloomberg’s New York, however, the city didn’t do this out of sheer good will. At almost every corner, I saw, either under construction or already completed, “luxury condos” or “luxury rentals.” These buildings can be thought of as analogous to the high-rise condos planned for either end of Brooklyn Bridge Park – the difference, of course, being that in the case of the High Line, they’re not actually in the park and don’t have direct access to the park.
While it’s only natural that builders would want to build near such an attractive feature as the High Line, and that the city would want development to increase its tax base, it’s somewhat disconcerting that they all seem to be high end. No one wants to go back to the days when Chelsea was characterized by factories, warehouses and rundown tenements. But according to accounts I’ve read, the local community lost battle after battle about inclusion of more affordable housing, building heights and density. Similarly, in Brooklyn, concerns about many development projects are being ignored by the powers that be.
The High Line indeed is a welcome addition to the city, but it’s unfortunate that it had to come into being as a gentrification accelerator.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
I visited the well-publicized High Line in Lower Manhattan this past weekend, the first weekend it was open to the public.
The High Line, as most people know, is a former freight rail line that was built in the mid-1930s and served the Meat Packing District until 1980. One of the most unusual features of the High Line is the fact that it goes right through several industrial high-rises — this is where freight, chiefly carcasses of cattle, was unloaded. Here and there, one also sees a spur that once led to a nearby factory, like the former Nabisco factory that now houses the Chelsea Market. The neighborhood is still dominated by industrial buildings, even though many of them now house art galleries.
During the 1990s three local residents came up with an idea for an elevated park, inspired by the “Promenade Plantée” in Paris. They organized themselves as “Friends of the High Line” in the same way that during the 1980s some Brooklyn Heights residents organized themselves as the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition.
Throughout the ’90s, a debate took place between the Friends of the High Line and the owners of nearby parking garages and warehouses, who wanted the rusting, potentially dangerous elevated railroad structure torn down. After Mayor Bloomberg took office, the Friends of the High Line won and construction began. So far, the first section, from Gansevoort Street in the Village to 20th Street, is complete. A second section, extending north to 30th Street, is scheduled to open next year, and tree planting there has already begun. A third section, from 30th to 34th streets, is also planned, but funding is in doubt due to the budget crunch.
The High Line itself is very beautiful, with many varieties of colorful plants and flowers, benches, and an elevator for those who don’t want to navigate the staircases at either end. In some places the old railroad tracks survive, having been incorporated into the design, but new railroad ties of dark wood have replaced the older, rotting ones. At various points, volunteers answer questions by park-goers, many of whom come from as far away as Seattle. We saw several “upscale” food carts, but they are unobtrusive and you have to look for them.
As always in Bloomberg’s New York, however, the city didn’t do this out of sheer good will. At almost every corner, I saw, either under construction or already completed, “luxury condos” or “luxury rentals.” These buildings can be thought of as analogous to the high-rise condos planned for either end of Brooklyn Bridge Park – the difference, of course, being that in the case of the High Line, they’re not actually in the park and don’t have direct access to the park.
While it’s only natural that builders would want to build near such an attractive feature as the High Line, and that the city would want development to increase its tax base, it’s somewhat disconcerting that they all seem to be high end. No one wants to go back to the days when Chelsea was characterized by factories, warehouses and rundown tenements. But according to accounts I’ve read, the local community lost battle after battle about inclusion of more affordable housing, building heights and density. Similarly, in Brooklyn, concerns about many development projects are being ignored by the powers that be.
The High Line indeed is a welcome addition to the city, but it’s unfortunate that it had to come into being as a gentrification accelerator.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Focus on Iran Overlooks Actual Palestinian History
By Raanan Geberer
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Israeli Prime Minister David Netanyahu recently said, more or less, that Arab states should not be so hung up on the Israeli-Palestinian problem because they face a greater threat from Iran than from Israel. He also maintained that some Arab leaders are secretly hoping for a strong Israel to act as a counterweight to Iran.
I’m not saying that Iran isn’t a threat — Iran’s rulers are clearly extremists who enjoy taunting and enraging the West. The country’s rockets and missiles are a serious danger not only to Israel but to the world at large.
But by painting Israel’s Islamist enemies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as mere puppets of Iran and supposing that Iran could pull the plug on these groups in a minute if it wanted to, Netanyahu is merely falling into an old error that has plagued the Zionist movement from its beginning.
That error is one that says that the Palestinian Arabs are mere pawns in someone else’s game and are incapable of forming an agenda of their own.
Back during the British Mandate, Zionist books, magazines and pamphlets (such as the old ones my parents still had in our home when I was growing up) intimated that there were only two reasons the Palestinian Arabs opposed Zionist settlement of the land. The first, they claimed, was that greedy Arab landowners felt that Arab peasants, influenced by the European Zionists’ progressive democratic ideas and their introduction of modern medicine and farming methods, might rebel against the landowners and want more of a say in their own affairs.
The second, they said, was that the British wanted to keep the Jews and Arabs fighting with each other so that they, the Brits, could always come out on top and defend their oil interests. The British, said the Zionist advocates, actually preferred to deal with the Arabs because they were more easily manipulated. The invasion of the new state of Israel by the British-trained Jordanian army under Glubb Pasha was viewed as an attempt by Downing Street to re-enter Palestine via the “back door.”
These arguments did have some truth to them. For example, the British did pursue a dishonest game of “divide and conquer” — in Africa, in India, in Ireland, and, yes, in Palestine. The problem was that this wasn’t the whole truth! If it were, the Jewish-Arab (or in those days, Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian) hostilities would have faded away shortly after the British exited the scene.
Fast-forward about 30 years, when American conservative intellectuals and pundits such as Norman Podhoretz and not-yet-president Ronald Reagan loudly said, over and over again, that Israel was the only reliable ally the U.S. had in the Mideast. These people pointed to the fact that Israel, unlike the Arab states, had a democratic internal structure and had a shared European heritage with us.
This whole way of thinking was basically based on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. These conservative thinkers pointed to radical Middle East regimes such as Syria, Iraq and Libya as fertile breeding grounds for Soviet influence. Even moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were portrayed by them as unstable regimes that could be toppled by radical revolutionary forces any second. Thus, Israel was seen merely as a strategic asset in the Cold War. The actual aspirations of Palestinian Arabs were totally ignored.
Once again, there was some truth in these arguments. Yes, the Soviets did want to “keep the pot boiling” in the Middle East (for example, the Soviets opposed the Israeli-Egyptian accords reached at Camp David) so the Arab states would be drawn even closer to the Soviet Union. But once again, this wasn’t the whole truth. If it were, the Arab-Israeli conflict would have disappeared shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If Israel and its supporters have dismissed the Palestinian Arabs and their aspirations, saying that they are merely puppets of outside forces, they are doing themselves a disservice. I myself often disagree with the Palestinians’ agenda, especially when they claim that there are no real links between the Jewish people and their ancient holy land, or when they say that the Israelis are merely “Europeans.” But even so, the Palestinians have many legitimate grievances against Israel. To negotiate with them as equals, not as if they were spoiled, cantankerous children, is the first step toward a reconciliation between the two peoples.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Israeli Prime Minister David Netanyahu recently said, more or less, that Arab states should not be so hung up on the Israeli-Palestinian problem because they face a greater threat from Iran than from Israel. He also maintained that some Arab leaders are secretly hoping for a strong Israel to act as a counterweight to Iran.
I’m not saying that Iran isn’t a threat — Iran’s rulers are clearly extremists who enjoy taunting and enraging the West. The country’s rockets and missiles are a serious danger not only to Israel but to the world at large.
But by painting Israel’s Islamist enemies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as mere puppets of Iran and supposing that Iran could pull the plug on these groups in a minute if it wanted to, Netanyahu is merely falling into an old error that has plagued the Zionist movement from its beginning.
That error is one that says that the Palestinian Arabs are mere pawns in someone else’s game and are incapable of forming an agenda of their own.
Back during the British Mandate, Zionist books, magazines and pamphlets (such as the old ones my parents still had in our home when I was growing up) intimated that there were only two reasons the Palestinian Arabs opposed Zionist settlement of the land. The first, they claimed, was that greedy Arab landowners felt that Arab peasants, influenced by the European Zionists’ progressive democratic ideas and their introduction of modern medicine and farming methods, might rebel against the landowners and want more of a say in their own affairs.
The second, they said, was that the British wanted to keep the Jews and Arabs fighting with each other so that they, the Brits, could always come out on top and defend their oil interests. The British, said the Zionist advocates, actually preferred to deal with the Arabs because they were more easily manipulated. The invasion of the new state of Israel by the British-trained Jordanian army under Glubb Pasha was viewed as an attempt by Downing Street to re-enter Palestine via the “back door.”
These arguments did have some truth to them. For example, the British did pursue a dishonest game of “divide and conquer” — in Africa, in India, in Ireland, and, yes, in Palestine. The problem was that this wasn’t the whole truth! If it were, the Jewish-Arab (or in those days, Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian) hostilities would have faded away shortly after the British exited the scene.
Fast-forward about 30 years, when American conservative intellectuals and pundits such as Norman Podhoretz and not-yet-president Ronald Reagan loudly said, over and over again, that Israel was the only reliable ally the U.S. had in the Mideast. These people pointed to the fact that Israel, unlike the Arab states, had a democratic internal structure and had a shared European heritage with us.
This whole way of thinking was basically based on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. These conservative thinkers pointed to radical Middle East regimes such as Syria, Iraq and Libya as fertile breeding grounds for Soviet influence. Even moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were portrayed by them as unstable regimes that could be toppled by radical revolutionary forces any second. Thus, Israel was seen merely as a strategic asset in the Cold War. The actual aspirations of Palestinian Arabs were totally ignored.
Once again, there was some truth in these arguments. Yes, the Soviets did want to “keep the pot boiling” in the Middle East (for example, the Soviets opposed the Israeli-Egyptian accords reached at Camp David) so the Arab states would be drawn even closer to the Soviet Union. But once again, this wasn’t the whole truth. If it were, the Arab-Israeli conflict would have disappeared shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If Israel and its supporters have dismissed the Palestinian Arabs and their aspirations, saying that they are merely puppets of outside forces, they are doing themselves a disservice. I myself often disagree with the Palestinians’ agenda, especially when they claim that there are no real links between the Jewish people and their ancient holy land, or when they say that the Israelis are merely “Europeans.” But even so, the Palestinians have many legitimate grievances against Israel. To negotiate with them as equals, not as if they were spoiled, cantankerous children, is the first step toward a reconciliation between the two peoples.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The 1977 Blackout Hits Co-op City
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN "MR. BELLER'S NEIGHBORHOOD"
By Raanan Geberer
It was July 1977. I had gotten my master’s degree in journalism the year before, but I still hadn’t gotten a full-time job. Not that jobs in journalism were easy to find. At the present time, I was writing weekly news articles for the Eastside Courier, a neighborhood newspaper on the Upper East Side, and monthly feature stories for Westchester Illustrated Magazine. Needless to say, I wasn’t making enough money to move into my own apartment, so I was back home in Co-op City – although, thank God, I didn’t have to ask my parents for money.
My brother Elliott was also at home – he’d just received his BA from Stony Brook and was also looking into going to grad school in a science-related field. Come to think of it, that was the last summer all four of us – me, Elliott, Mom and Dad – lived together in that apartment.
When the lights went off, we, like everyone else, thought it was a local thing in our apartment and rushed to the circuit-breaker panel. But then Elliott noticed that all the windows in the neighboring buildings had also gone dark. Mom lit a Yahrtzeit candle, a traditional Jewish memorial candle, and Dad got out the transistor radio and the flashlight. At first, the radio just reported that the blackout was citywide, although they expected some neighborhoods to “go on” sooner than others. But then, there were reports of looting in several inner-city neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn.
“The animals are gonna start breaking into the stores on Fordham Road any moment now,” said my non-too-subtly racist father. “Alexander’s, Sears, they’ll all have to move. Fordham Road will be ruined, just like Crotona Park was. It’s a damn shame,” he said, shaking his head. “Thank God tomorrow’s Saturday – I won’t have to work. I just wished I had gone to the supermarket tonight!” Remembering the last big blackout, in ’65, he informed us that at least the phone lines would work.
Bored, Elliott and I drifted into our room. “Let’s make some calls,” he said, with a naughty grin. In his freshman year, one of his college roommates had introduced him to the joy of making crank phone calls. Although he was moving away from this juvenile activity, there wasn’t much else to do now that the power was off.
“Who should we call?” I asked.
“How about Bob Marksman?” Bob had been Elliott’s closest childhood friend, although they hardly saw each other nowadays. “I’ll give you the phone, and you put on an accent. Say any crazy thing you like!”
The phone rang, and a young male voice, which I supposed to belong to Bob, answered. “Hey,” I said in an old-man’s Yiddish accent, “You hoid about dat homo blackout?” He mumbled something, then hung up. We both giggled.
Then, it was my turn. “How about Angelo,” I asked, mentioning a friend who had gotten married a few months ago.
“You kidding?” Elliott asked. “He’s probably f---ing his wife!”
Ignoring him, I dialed Angelo. “Hi,” I said, dispensing with the crank idea, “This is Ron. How are you doing?”
“Um,” said Angelo, “can you call some other time? We’re busy now.”
I hung up. “See?” my brother said, turning to me. “He’s f----ing his wife!”
On that note, we went to sleep. We wondered if we should take the transistor radio into the room and listen to Jean Shepherd, like we used to in our teens, but we didn’t even know if he was still on the air.
In the morning, we listened to the radio. They were rattling off a list of neighborhoods where the power was already on. One of them was City Island, about a 20-minute walk from Co-op City’s Section 5, where we lived.
I suggested walking over to City Island and buying some food at the small grocery store – only as much as I could carry. Elliott enthusiastically agreed, although he couldn’t go along with me – he had to go to his part-time summer job as a gardener on the grounds in an hour or so, although he still didn’t know whether the maintenance office would be open.
“Let’s make a list,” Elliott said. “Mom and Dad always have lots and lots of bottles of apple juice and cans of soup and boxes of cereal, and some coffee, and like, also a box of spaghetti, so we don’t need any of that stuff.”
“Let’s see,” I said “What’s not perishable?”
“Good, good.”
“Maybe I could get a bottle of soda!”
“Good, good. And don’t forget spaghetti sauce.”
“OK, spaghetti sauce. I’ll also buy a loaf of bread and some orange juice, and, let’s see, some cheddar cheese, and some carrots and celery, um, with a few apples and a box of raisins.”
“Now you’re really swingin’, Jack’!” Elliott said, approvingly.
“And I’ll get a carton of milk!”
“Milk? What’s wrong with you?!!! It’s too perishable!” said Elliott, ever the scientist. “You gotta get some yogurt! It has bacteria in it that will make it last longer!”
“OK, yogurt!” I reluctantly conceded. I slipped on my clothes, laced up my sneakers and headed to the living room, where Dad was reading a magazine and slurping a cup of coffee.
“I’m going to City Island to buy some food. The radio said the power’s back on there.”
“City Island, eh?” he asked. “Why don’t we go to one of those seafood joints and get some shrimp and clams? Yeah, yeah, shrimp and clams!” he said, laughing. Dad wasn’t very religious, but he never missed an opportunity to make fun of non-Jews for eating shellfish, which he termed “scavengers” and “dirty animals.”
I said nothing, but just headed out the door. We lived on the 20th floor. Thank God the co-op had its own emergency power -- although it was only for the elevators, hallways and lobbies, not inside the apartments.
I left the building, walked across the covered bridge over Pelham Parkway, and then down the dirt path through the weeds leading to Pelham Parkway itself. Walking on the side of the road, I passed the garbage dump, the horse stables, the Police Department firing range. Then, I came to a crossroads, although certainly one more prosaic than Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” One way led to Orchard Beach, the other to City Island. Taking the road toward City Island, I passed the Turtle Bay golf driving range, where I spent many idle hours on less-complicated days.
Finally, the City Island Bridge – the narrow island’s only link to the mainland – and then City Island itself, with its boat yards, seafood restaurants, Navy surplus stores and art galleries. With one exception – the five-story “skyscraper” in the middle of the island -- none of the buildings were more than two stories high. I walked into City Island’s sole grocery store and got everything on the list. The guy behind the counter saw that it would be heavy, so he gave me two strong paper bags with handles, for which I was grateful.
Walking home along the same path, the bags felt heavier and heavier, and I had to put them down every 20 steps or so. The hot sun was scorching. Feeling totally miserable, I thought about my life. I wasn’t a full-time journalist – all I was, was a goddamned ARTICLE WRITER! Two couples my own age I knew had recently gotten married – Angelo and Karen, and Mark and Natalie – and I hadn’t even had a real girlfriend for five years, although I dated a lot. And to top it off, I still lived with my parents. The fact that I had lived on my own when I was away at school didn’t mean a damn thing now! As I saw it, I was batting zero.
Just then, as I was passing the trash dump, I saw the lights of Co-op City turn on once again. Hope rewarded, for now and for the future. I headed home.
By Raanan Geberer
It was July 1977. I had gotten my master’s degree in journalism the year before, but I still hadn’t gotten a full-time job. Not that jobs in journalism were easy to find. At the present time, I was writing weekly news articles for the Eastside Courier, a neighborhood newspaper on the Upper East Side, and monthly feature stories for Westchester Illustrated Magazine. Needless to say, I wasn’t making enough money to move into my own apartment, so I was back home in Co-op City – although, thank God, I didn’t have to ask my parents for money.
My brother Elliott was also at home – he’d just received his BA from Stony Brook and was also looking into going to grad school in a science-related field. Come to think of it, that was the last summer all four of us – me, Elliott, Mom and Dad – lived together in that apartment.
When the lights went off, we, like everyone else, thought it was a local thing in our apartment and rushed to the circuit-breaker panel. But then Elliott noticed that all the windows in the neighboring buildings had also gone dark. Mom lit a Yahrtzeit candle, a traditional Jewish memorial candle, and Dad got out the transistor radio and the flashlight. At first, the radio just reported that the blackout was citywide, although they expected some neighborhoods to “go on” sooner than others. But then, there were reports of looting in several inner-city neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn.
“The animals are gonna start breaking into the stores on Fordham Road any moment now,” said my non-too-subtly racist father. “Alexander’s, Sears, they’ll all have to move. Fordham Road will be ruined, just like Crotona Park was. It’s a damn shame,” he said, shaking his head. “Thank God tomorrow’s Saturday – I won’t have to work. I just wished I had gone to the supermarket tonight!” Remembering the last big blackout, in ’65, he informed us that at least the phone lines would work.
Bored, Elliott and I drifted into our room. “Let’s make some calls,” he said, with a naughty grin. In his freshman year, one of his college roommates had introduced him to the joy of making crank phone calls. Although he was moving away from this juvenile activity, there wasn’t much else to do now that the power was off.
“Who should we call?” I asked.
“How about Bob Marksman?” Bob had been Elliott’s closest childhood friend, although they hardly saw each other nowadays. “I’ll give you the phone, and you put on an accent. Say any crazy thing you like!”
The phone rang, and a young male voice, which I supposed to belong to Bob, answered. “Hey,” I said in an old-man’s Yiddish accent, “You hoid about dat homo blackout?” He mumbled something, then hung up. We both giggled.
Then, it was my turn. “How about Angelo,” I asked, mentioning a friend who had gotten married a few months ago.
“You kidding?” Elliott asked. “He’s probably f---ing his wife!”
Ignoring him, I dialed Angelo. “Hi,” I said, dispensing with the crank idea, “This is Ron. How are you doing?”
“Um,” said Angelo, “can you call some other time? We’re busy now.”
I hung up. “See?” my brother said, turning to me. “He’s f----ing his wife!”
On that note, we went to sleep. We wondered if we should take the transistor radio into the room and listen to Jean Shepherd, like we used to in our teens, but we didn’t even know if he was still on the air.
In the morning, we listened to the radio. They were rattling off a list of neighborhoods where the power was already on. One of them was City Island, about a 20-minute walk from Co-op City’s Section 5, where we lived.
I suggested walking over to City Island and buying some food at the small grocery store – only as much as I could carry. Elliott enthusiastically agreed, although he couldn’t go along with me – he had to go to his part-time summer job as a gardener on the grounds in an hour or so, although he still didn’t know whether the maintenance office would be open.
“Let’s make a list,” Elliott said. “Mom and Dad always have lots and lots of bottles of apple juice and cans of soup and boxes of cereal, and some coffee, and like, also a box of spaghetti, so we don’t need any of that stuff.”
“Let’s see,” I said “What’s not perishable?”
“Good, good.”
“Maybe I could get a bottle of soda!”
“Good, good. And don’t forget spaghetti sauce.”
“OK, spaghetti sauce. I’ll also buy a loaf of bread and some orange juice, and, let’s see, some cheddar cheese, and some carrots and celery, um, with a few apples and a box of raisins.”
“Now you’re really swingin’, Jack’!” Elliott said, approvingly.
“And I’ll get a carton of milk!”
“Milk? What’s wrong with you?!!! It’s too perishable!” said Elliott, ever the scientist. “You gotta get some yogurt! It has bacteria in it that will make it last longer!”
“OK, yogurt!” I reluctantly conceded. I slipped on my clothes, laced up my sneakers and headed to the living room, where Dad was reading a magazine and slurping a cup of coffee.
“I’m going to City Island to buy some food. The radio said the power’s back on there.”
“City Island, eh?” he asked. “Why don’t we go to one of those seafood joints and get some shrimp and clams? Yeah, yeah, shrimp and clams!” he said, laughing. Dad wasn’t very religious, but he never missed an opportunity to make fun of non-Jews for eating shellfish, which he termed “scavengers” and “dirty animals.”
I said nothing, but just headed out the door. We lived on the 20th floor. Thank God the co-op had its own emergency power -- although it was only for the elevators, hallways and lobbies, not inside the apartments.
I left the building, walked across the covered bridge over Pelham Parkway, and then down the dirt path through the weeds leading to Pelham Parkway itself. Walking on the side of the road, I passed the garbage dump, the horse stables, the Police Department firing range. Then, I came to a crossroads, although certainly one more prosaic than Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” One way led to Orchard Beach, the other to City Island. Taking the road toward City Island, I passed the Turtle Bay golf driving range, where I spent many idle hours on less-complicated days.
Finally, the City Island Bridge – the narrow island’s only link to the mainland – and then City Island itself, with its boat yards, seafood restaurants, Navy surplus stores and art galleries. With one exception – the five-story “skyscraper” in the middle of the island -- none of the buildings were more than two stories high. I walked into City Island’s sole grocery store and got everything on the list. The guy behind the counter saw that it would be heavy, so he gave me two strong paper bags with handles, for which I was grateful.
Walking home along the same path, the bags felt heavier and heavier, and I had to put them down every 20 steps or so. The hot sun was scorching. Feeling totally miserable, I thought about my life. I wasn’t a full-time journalist – all I was, was a goddamned ARTICLE WRITER! Two couples my own age I knew had recently gotten married – Angelo and Karen, and Mark and Natalie – and I hadn’t even had a real girlfriend for five years, although I dated a lot. And to top it off, I still lived with my parents. The fact that I had lived on my own when I was away at school didn’t mean a damn thing now! As I saw it, I was batting zero.
Just then, as I was passing the trash dump, I saw the lights of Co-op City turn on once again. Hope rewarded, for now and for the future. I headed home.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Record Stores: Gone But Not Forgotten
The news that the Virgin Megastore on Union Square will be closing soon is shocking, but not totally unexpected. Just a few years ago, the equally large Tower Records closed all its outlets. And what of the giant record-store chains of yesterday? There is apparently one Sam Goody’s in New York City, a far cry from the chain in its heyday. King Carol doesn’t exist anymore, and neither does the Record Hunter. And let’s not forget that at one time, every major New York City department store had an active record department.
It appears that in the near future, I’ll do all of my CD buying online, except for occasional trips to specialty, used-CD stores such as the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, N.J., or Academy Records in Manhattan.
I know that many younger people don’t even buy CDs – they download all their music from online services. But doesn’t that deny people the fun of looking at CD covers and reading liner notes? And what about the experience of going to the record store, meeting friends, and just talking to the knowledgeable people behind the counter about music and learning a lot from them?
In the Navy
I had the good fortune to work in two record stores, one wholesale and one retail. I won’t tell you where the wholesale store was, for obvious reasons, but it supplied a lot of retail stores “down the shore” in New Jersey. It was also “connected.” One day, I was given a stack of (vinyl) records that each had stickers saying “To Be Sold Only in Outlets of the U.S. Navy.” My job for the day was to take a blow dryer and, one by one, remove these stickers so they could be sold in this wholesaler’s own retailers in Jersey. I didn’t say anything.
The owner of the store talked something like Tony Soprano, and someone told me that he was given this store plus a few others in reward for “taking the fall” and serving time for a higher-up who had committed a robbery.
Because this wholesaler carried such a great volume of records, I vividly remember seeing the first albums of artists who later became major stars. For example, we always had two or three copies, but no more, of an odd-looking record with an old photo of Asbury Park on the cover called, appropriately, “Greetings From Asbury Park.” A few years later, the artist, Bruce Springsteen, was one of the top singer-songwriters in America.
A Retail Store in Midtown
The retail store I worked in, a fairly large one, was in Midtown Manhattan. It was there that I first heard the word “disco.” Half the people working there were would-be actors, actresses and musicians. Of the two managers, one, a young guy with shoulder-length hair, was heavily into jazz – his hero was Sonny Rollins – and talked in an already-outdated jive talk. It might have already been 1974, but to him, every girl was still a “chick,” every guy a “cat.”
The other, in his fifties at the time, was also a jazz fan and had met many of the great jazz musicians of the ‘50s, such as Sonny Stitt, in their heyday. But he was even more heavily into Sinatra, and from time to time put out Sinatra bootlegs, which he sold in the store. My feeling is that he produced them more as a labor of love than anything else – they contained a lot of rare radio airchecks and alternate takes.
“If I met Sinatra, and I showed these to him and told him I put them out, I wonder what he’d say?” he wondered. If such an encounter ever did happen, I thought to myself, Sinatra and/or his bodyguards might not have been pleasant.
This guy also had a serious side to him. The movie “Lady Sings the Blues” had just come out, and a long-haired guy about 21 years old – the age I was at the time – had just bought a Billie Holiday album at the store. As soon as he left, our manager started insulting him left and right. I wondered why, since he really knew jazz and had talked about Billie on occasion.
“Well,” he answered, “people like that don’t really appreciate Billie – she’s just a symbol to them because she was an addict and came from a poverty-stricken, minority background. If they really appreciated her music they wouldn’t be buying only her, they’d be buying Sarah, Ella, Lester Young and Charlie Christian, too!”
The store’s famous classical music department was headed by a man in his early 60s with a German accent who had probably been a refugee from Nazi Germany years beforehand. He lamented the sloppiness inherent in the operation. “If you go to Germany nowadays and say you want to work in a record store,” he said, “you can’t just work on the floor. You’ll be stacking records, organizing them, opening boxes and memorizing catalogue items for two years before you’re even allowed to see a customer!”
Then, there was the owner. I don’t remember much about him, but at some point he began receiving private “visits” from a tall, long-legged, extremely scantily clad young lady who spoke abominable English. Soon, whenever an “important person” with whom the owner did business showed up at the store – such as the printer he used to print our ads – he would call for this young woman, and the important person would also disappear into the back office with the young woman.
Records weren’t all we sold. The front of the store had all sorts of items that are almost totally unknown today – record-cleaning brushes and cloths, cleaning fluid, head cleaners for cassette players, and, of course, phonograph needles! Stereo freaks of the ’70s and ’80s spent hours cleaning their records, adjusting their tone arms until they put just the right weight on the records, and bragging about their speakers, “woofers,” “tweeters” and other audio equipment.
Thus ends my little look at the record-store business, circa the 1970s – a business that today’s young people, unfortunately, will never know.
Originally Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
———
It appears that in the near future, I’ll do all of my CD buying online, except for occasional trips to specialty, used-CD stores such as the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, N.J., or Academy Records in Manhattan.
I know that many younger people don’t even buy CDs – they download all their music from online services. But doesn’t that deny people the fun of looking at CD covers and reading liner notes? And what about the experience of going to the record store, meeting friends, and just talking to the knowledgeable people behind the counter about music and learning a lot from them?
In the Navy
I had the good fortune to work in two record stores, one wholesale and one retail. I won’t tell you where the wholesale store was, for obvious reasons, but it supplied a lot of retail stores “down the shore” in New Jersey. It was also “connected.” One day, I was given a stack of (vinyl) records that each had stickers saying “To Be Sold Only in Outlets of the U.S. Navy.” My job for the day was to take a blow dryer and, one by one, remove these stickers so they could be sold in this wholesaler’s own retailers in Jersey. I didn’t say anything.
The owner of the store talked something like Tony Soprano, and someone told me that he was given this store plus a few others in reward for “taking the fall” and serving time for a higher-up who had committed a robbery.
Because this wholesaler carried such a great volume of records, I vividly remember seeing the first albums of artists who later became major stars. For example, we always had two or three copies, but no more, of an odd-looking record with an old photo of Asbury Park on the cover called, appropriately, “Greetings From Asbury Park.” A few years later, the artist, Bruce Springsteen, was one of the top singer-songwriters in America.
A Retail Store in Midtown
The retail store I worked in, a fairly large one, was in Midtown Manhattan. It was there that I first heard the word “disco.” Half the people working there were would-be actors, actresses and musicians. Of the two managers, one, a young guy with shoulder-length hair, was heavily into jazz – his hero was Sonny Rollins – and talked in an already-outdated jive talk. It might have already been 1974, but to him, every girl was still a “chick,” every guy a “cat.”
The other, in his fifties at the time, was also a jazz fan and had met many of the great jazz musicians of the ‘50s, such as Sonny Stitt, in their heyday. But he was even more heavily into Sinatra, and from time to time put out Sinatra bootlegs, which he sold in the store. My feeling is that he produced them more as a labor of love than anything else – they contained a lot of rare radio airchecks and alternate takes.
“If I met Sinatra, and I showed these to him and told him I put them out, I wonder what he’d say?” he wondered. If such an encounter ever did happen, I thought to myself, Sinatra and/or his bodyguards might not have been pleasant.
This guy also had a serious side to him. The movie “Lady Sings the Blues” had just come out, and a long-haired guy about 21 years old – the age I was at the time – had just bought a Billie Holiday album at the store. As soon as he left, our manager started insulting him left and right. I wondered why, since he really knew jazz and had talked about Billie on occasion.
“Well,” he answered, “people like that don’t really appreciate Billie – she’s just a symbol to them because she was an addict and came from a poverty-stricken, minority background. If they really appreciated her music they wouldn’t be buying only her, they’d be buying Sarah, Ella, Lester Young and Charlie Christian, too!”
The store’s famous classical music department was headed by a man in his early 60s with a German accent who had probably been a refugee from Nazi Germany years beforehand. He lamented the sloppiness inherent in the operation. “If you go to Germany nowadays and say you want to work in a record store,” he said, “you can’t just work on the floor. You’ll be stacking records, organizing them, opening boxes and memorizing catalogue items for two years before you’re even allowed to see a customer!”
Then, there was the owner. I don’t remember much about him, but at some point he began receiving private “visits” from a tall, long-legged, extremely scantily clad young lady who spoke abominable English. Soon, whenever an “important person” with whom the owner did business showed up at the store – such as the printer he used to print our ads – he would call for this young woman, and the important person would also disappear into the back office with the young woman.
Records weren’t all we sold. The front of the store had all sorts of items that are almost totally unknown today – record-cleaning brushes and cloths, cleaning fluid, head cleaners for cassette players, and, of course, phonograph needles! Stereo freaks of the ’70s and ’80s spent hours cleaning their records, adjusting their tone arms until they put just the right weight on the records, and bragging about their speakers, “woofers,” “tweeters” and other audio equipment.
Thus ends my little look at the record-store business, circa the 1970s – a business that today’s young people, unfortunately, will never know.
Originally Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
———
Monday, February 16, 2009
Time To Fix NY State’s Part-Time Unemployment Rules
By Raanan Geberer
BROOKLYN -- How many days a week do most people work. Five.
However, the New York State Department of Labor’s unemployment regulations seems to believe we all work four-day weeks. Don’t believe it? Look at the regulations for what happens when you work part-time while still receiving unemployment. Here it is, straight from the web site:
“Each day or part of a day of work will result in a payment of a partial benefit as follows:
1 day of work = 3/4 of your full rate
2 days of work = 1/2 of your full rate
3 days of work = 1/4 of your full rate
4 days of work = No benefits due”
Apparently, the Department of Labor doesn’t know basic math. Here’s another example: If someone has a part-time job and works even one hour, he or she forfeits the entire day! Again, thinking back to my math classes, I don’t think the typical workday is one hour.
If, say, a typical work day is supposed to be eight hours (and it rarely is nowadays, but let’s just pretend), then if a recipient of unemployment insurance works one hour, shouldn’t they forfeit one hour and be paid for seven (or six, depending on whether you count a lunch hour or not)? Also, if someone is on unemployment and works one day out of the week, shouldn’t he or she be paid four-fifths of his usual check, and not three-fourths?
The state’s antiquated rules were probably been formulated in a day and age when part-time work was extremely rare, and the great majority of people in the workforce worked either full-time or not at all. The original bureaucrats of the 1930s who formulated these regulations may well have thought that people who claimed part-time work were trying to get away with something, and wanted to make things difficult for them so they could find full-time work and get off the unemployment rolls.
This is no longer the case, if it ever was. The number of part-time workers, especially in service industries, has been rising, especially what the government calls the “involuntary part-time,” meaning those who would like to work full-time but aren’t able to find full-time jobs. Thus, discriminating against them by short-changing them gives them a double whammy, so to speak.
One may ask — won’t straightening this part-time situation take more money from our tax dollars? No, on the contrary — it will encourage part-time work, and the state Department of Labor may very well save money by having to pay out less! Look at it this way — say, there’s an unemployed person receiving unemployment insurance. He or she gets an offer to work three mornings a week. But because the rules say that if he or she works even one hour, he forfeits the entire day, that person decides not to take the job and risk his unemployment payments.
Now, however, that person will have no qualms about accepting the job because he’s sure that he’ll be treated fairly by the state, and the state will actually save money by only paying him for those hours he doesn’t work.
Back in the early 1930s, when one fourth of the American people were jobless, organizations of the unemployed sprang up everywhere. It’s largely thanks to these groups that we have unemployment insurance. If the current economic conditions continue, it’s only a matter of time before similar groups begin to emerge. And this issue – receiving unemployment benefits while working part-time – should be at the top of their list.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN -- How many days a week do most people work. Five.
However, the New York State Department of Labor’s unemployment regulations seems to believe we all work four-day weeks. Don’t believe it? Look at the regulations for what happens when you work part-time while still receiving unemployment. Here it is, straight from the web site:
“Each day or part of a day of work will result in a payment of a partial benefit as follows:
1 day of work = 3/4 of your full rate
2 days of work = 1/2 of your full rate
3 days of work = 1/4 of your full rate
4 days of work = No benefits due”
Apparently, the Department of Labor doesn’t know basic math. Here’s another example: If someone has a part-time job and works even one hour, he or she forfeits the entire day! Again, thinking back to my math classes, I don’t think the typical workday is one hour.
If, say, a typical work day is supposed to be eight hours (and it rarely is nowadays, but let’s just pretend), then if a recipient of unemployment insurance works one hour, shouldn’t they forfeit one hour and be paid for seven (or six, depending on whether you count a lunch hour or not)? Also, if someone is on unemployment and works one day out of the week, shouldn’t he or she be paid four-fifths of his usual check, and not three-fourths?
The state’s antiquated rules were probably been formulated in a day and age when part-time work was extremely rare, and the great majority of people in the workforce worked either full-time or not at all. The original bureaucrats of the 1930s who formulated these regulations may well have thought that people who claimed part-time work were trying to get away with something, and wanted to make things difficult for them so they could find full-time work and get off the unemployment rolls.
This is no longer the case, if it ever was. The number of part-time workers, especially in service industries, has been rising, especially what the government calls the “involuntary part-time,” meaning those who would like to work full-time but aren’t able to find full-time jobs. Thus, discriminating against them by short-changing them gives them a double whammy, so to speak.
One may ask — won’t straightening this part-time situation take more money from our tax dollars? No, on the contrary — it will encourage part-time work, and the state Department of Labor may very well save money by having to pay out less! Look at it this way — say, there’s an unemployed person receiving unemployment insurance. He or she gets an offer to work three mornings a week. But because the rules say that if he or she works even one hour, he forfeits the entire day, that person decides not to take the job and risk his unemployment payments.
Now, however, that person will have no qualms about accepting the job because he’s sure that he’ll be treated fairly by the state, and the state will actually save money by only paying him for those hours he doesn’t work.
Back in the early 1930s, when one fourth of the American people were jobless, organizations of the unemployed sprang up everywhere. It’s largely thanks to these groups that we have unemployment insurance. If the current economic conditions continue, it’s only a matter of time before similar groups begin to emerge. And this issue – receiving unemployment benefits while working part-time – should be at the top of their list.
Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Friday, January 2, 2009
Israel and Gaza: Both Sides at Fault
By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — As I’m writing this, Israel has launched a massive air attack on Hamas strongholds in Gaza. This followed a two-day period wherein Palestinian militants fired almost 200 rockets into Israel.
If you want to trace this situation back to its immediate cause (as opposed to addressing the overall Arab-Israeli conflict), one can look back to Ariel Sharon’s 2005 move to evacuate Israeli troops from Gaza. This seemed like a move of peace, but one must examine this closely. Israel refused to negotiate the pullout with the Palestinian Authority (then dominated by the moderate Fatah group). This basically ensured that Hamas would take over Gaza, and that there would be years of back-and-forth violence, thus preventing a true Israeli-Palestinian peace. This would then serve, in a bizarre way, the warlike aims of Gen. Sharon, who believed that peace can only be achieved by total victory. Sharon is gone — well, almost — but we are stuck with his legacy.
But taking a broader view, we can see that both Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians are at fault. The Arabs and Palestinians are at fault for:
Constantly making nasty, disrespectful and condescending remarks about Israel and the Jewish people in general. Read any statement by Hamas or Hizbollah leaders.
Trying to place a double standard on the state of Israel — i.e., it’s OK for almost all the Arab states to define themselves as Muslim in their basic laws, but if Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, it’s suddenly racist.
Constantly firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets — even though these rockets are inefficient, this doesn’t make those who fire them any less malevolent.
Denying the obvious historical connection between the Jewish people and the Biblical land of Israel. Kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and;
Perpetrating attacks against civilians, such as suicide bombings.
The Israelis are at fault for:
Putting Gaza under siege, thus denying civilians medicine, food and water and causing untold human misery.
Subjecting Palestinians to daily harassment and disrespect at border crossings, checkpoints and roadblocks. Israel’s aim in doing so very well may be to try to “encourage” as many Palestinians to emigrate as possible.
Denying Palestinians’ right (on many occasions) to engage in peaceful protest. Violating U.N. resolutions repeatedly.
Violating international law by engaging in torture and by detaining prisoners for long periods of time without being charged; and, perhaps most of all;
Playing by “gangster rules”: “If you kill one of ours, we’ll kill 10 of yours.”
In addition, it’s somewhat odd that whenever Israel makes a military move, the fallout ends peace talks already under way — in this case, talks between Israel and Syria. This brings up the question — do the ruling circles and military leaders in Israel really want peace, or do they want military dominance first and peace only on their own terms?
In an ideal world, I would advocate United Nations troops on both sides of the border, the banning of Muslim extremist groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah, and the banning of Israeli extremist groups as well, such as Avigdor Lieberman’s party (which seeks “transfer” of Israeli Arabs) and some of the settler organizations. I would also call for the end of Syrian influence in Lebanon as well as Iranian influence in the whole region (and hopefully someday, the internal overthrow of the Iranian fundamentalist regime).
Finally, although I cannot in good conscience call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, since that would give free rein to its enemies to destroy it, I would call for the U.S. to scale down such aid so it matches the amount of aid the U.S. gives other nations.
(Note — Raanan Geberer, the managing editor of the Daily Eagle, has volunteered on two archaeological digs in Israel and was once a summer student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His father and uncle both were American volunteers in the Haganah, which became the Israel Army, during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.)
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — As I’m writing this, Israel has launched a massive air attack on Hamas strongholds in Gaza. This followed a two-day period wherein Palestinian militants fired almost 200 rockets into Israel.
If you want to trace this situation back to its immediate cause (as opposed to addressing the overall Arab-Israeli conflict), one can look back to Ariel Sharon’s 2005 move to evacuate Israeli troops from Gaza. This seemed like a move of peace, but one must examine this closely. Israel refused to negotiate the pullout with the Palestinian Authority (then dominated by the moderate Fatah group). This basically ensured that Hamas would take over Gaza, and that there would be years of back-and-forth violence, thus preventing a true Israeli-Palestinian peace. This would then serve, in a bizarre way, the warlike aims of Gen. Sharon, who believed that peace can only be achieved by total victory. Sharon is gone — well, almost — but we are stuck with his legacy.
But taking a broader view, we can see that both Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians are at fault. The Arabs and Palestinians are at fault for:
Constantly making nasty, disrespectful and condescending remarks about Israel and the Jewish people in general. Read any statement by Hamas or Hizbollah leaders.
Trying to place a double standard on the state of Israel — i.e., it’s OK for almost all the Arab states to define themselves as Muslim in their basic laws, but if Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, it’s suddenly racist.
Constantly firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets — even though these rockets are inefficient, this doesn’t make those who fire them any less malevolent.
Denying the obvious historical connection between the Jewish people and the Biblical land of Israel. Kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and;
Perpetrating attacks against civilians, such as suicide bombings.
The Israelis are at fault for:
Putting Gaza under siege, thus denying civilians medicine, food and water and causing untold human misery.
Subjecting Palestinians to daily harassment and disrespect at border crossings, checkpoints and roadblocks. Israel’s aim in doing so very well may be to try to “encourage” as many Palestinians to emigrate as possible.
Denying Palestinians’ right (on many occasions) to engage in peaceful protest. Violating U.N. resolutions repeatedly.
Violating international law by engaging in torture and by detaining prisoners for long periods of time without being charged; and, perhaps most of all;
Playing by “gangster rules”: “If you kill one of ours, we’ll kill 10 of yours.”
In addition, it’s somewhat odd that whenever Israel makes a military move, the fallout ends peace talks already under way — in this case, talks between Israel and Syria. This brings up the question — do the ruling circles and military leaders in Israel really want peace, or do they want military dominance first and peace only on their own terms?
In an ideal world, I would advocate United Nations troops on both sides of the border, the banning of Muslim extremist groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah, and the banning of Israeli extremist groups as well, such as Avigdor Lieberman’s party (which seeks “transfer” of Israeli Arabs) and some of the settler organizations. I would also call for the end of Syrian influence in Lebanon as well as Iranian influence in the whole region (and hopefully someday, the internal overthrow of the Iranian fundamentalist regime).
Finally, although I cannot in good conscience call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, since that would give free rein to its enemies to destroy it, I would call for the U.S. to scale down such aid so it matches the amount of aid the U.S. gives other nations.
(Note — Raanan Geberer, the managing editor of the Daily Eagle, has volunteered on two archaeological digs in Israel and was once a summer student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His father and uncle both were American volunteers in the Haganah, which became the Israel Army, during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.)
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