Author: Alan Wallach

I’m 90.  I have plenty of energy and I am still very cognitively active. And I do not, I repeat, do not take Balance of Nature fruit and veggie pills and I do not take Prevagen with ingredients from jellyfish.  I eat right and I exercise every day. It’s much cheaper and it really works.

I don’t know who ESPN thinks their audience is but it can’t be baseball fans. The baseball fans I know want to watch baseball not personal interest stories about athletes. They want to know who’s batting, who’s pitching, and please, on the whole screen. I, for one and I’m not alone, can do without seeing which Joe Celebrity is in the stands. Or do we have to get an interview superimposed on the game, or watch the loonies in crazy costumes in the audience, or little kids eating ice scream. I didn’t get a big screen TV so that they can submerge the game into a small window. And the latest, give a mike to a player and feature him during the game in his own window. It’s bad enough the commercials take up so much of the broadcast. This isn’t broadway, it’s a damn baseball game. I earnestly wish we could bring back Red Barber or Mel Allen who knew how to broadcast a game. I find I’m happier listening to Howie Rose on CBS rather that watch a Mets game on ESPN. Even worse is ESPN2  with KAYROD in a permanent side window overlaid on the game. They are not worth the subscription. I have to admit that even though the guys on SNY are better than most. Gary Cohen is a good broadcaster. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez do a great job analyzing things. But they, too, show us the crap in the stands that don’t interest me in the least. I find that watching the SNY Fast Forward summary is often better than the game itself.

It was 1955. I was a young Air Force officer sitting in the diner in Dover Delaware with a girl I recently met named Jeanine.  She was from Tennessee and had just introduced me to Elvis on the juke box singing “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hounddog.” She was overcome with him as I remember the teen girls behaving about Sinatra some 15 years earlier. I was not impressed. But then she played another of her favorites, Tony Bennett singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and I was sold. I was a big fan of his my whole life.  He will be missed

This isn’t anything new. It’s the thing no one wants to talk about but it’s one of the factors which makes the so-called American exceptionalism a big negative. Follow the money. The second amendment is very simple. It permits people to arm as part of a well-regulated militia. It doesn’t allow everyone to carry a gun everywhere. Almost everything that we can’t fix in this nation can be attributed to the bribery called lobbying.. Our gun violence can’t be fixed because of lobby money. Big Pharma has for years prevented medicare from negotiating prices which results in US drug prices being the highest in the world. Climate control necessary to save our lives is prevented primarily by the fossil fuel industry. The planet will survive. It’s billions of years older than we are. It’s we the inhabitants that won’t survive. Back in the Eisenhower administration we built the interstate highway system ignoring public transportation. Anyone who spends any time in Europe knows what public transportation should be. Our train system in garbage. And I’m not referring to the crashes. Moving around by train in the US is a disgrace. Why did it happen? Follow the money. The teamster union, together with the auto industry and the fuel producers pushed for roads, not trains. Recently, I experienced a miserable flight to Europe on a United Airlines flight. I researched it and found out that 4 or 5 inches have been cut from the space between rows so that more passengers can fit in the plane. Money again. How come the Department of Transportation hasn’t done anything about it. I’m sure if it tries there will be legislation to stop it. At one time, I assumed the supreme court would save us. But they are a big part of the problem, as venal as any corrupt legislator.

I could go on but US industry which is stronger and more influential that ever in our history is killing us. The business model of most of our industry is profit over or to the exclusion of everything. And any attempt to stop it is fought with money via lobby corruption. It’s no joke and it’s getting worse as the discrepancy between rich and poor gets worse.

We all know Trump’s modus operandi is to delay, delay, delay. The latest his lawyers are proposing to the judge is to delay his trial(s) until after the election because the poor guy is so busy running for president that he hasn’t got time for trial(s). I suggest they have it backwards. Trump should be so busy being on trial(s) that he can’t possibly have the time to run for president. Perhaps he would like to delay the election until after his trials. Or obeying the law (something he finds difficult), he can wait until 2028 to run again when he’ll be 82, more likely to drop dead in the meantime.

Back in my high school days, I couldn’t afford to go to the college of my choice which accepted me. So I got a great education at Brooklyn College at the cost of $50 per semester plus books. The USAir Force sent me to school to get a masters degree.  After serving for four years, I entered a PhD program in graduate school on the GI bill. Tuitions in the  US today are a disgrace considering that in most European countries, college level education is free for students that want to go. Most college graduates today invariably have to get jobs immediately after graduating to pay their student loans off.  Graduate school, law school, medical school – Ha ha! We should be ashamed.  Biden just dribbled a bit. Not nearly enough. Bernie Sanders has the right idea.

McConnell says, “elect us and we’ll tell you what we are going to do” Buy a pig in a poke he says.  Now McCarthy gave us the answer.  He’s going to investigate the FBI and DOJ now.  Finally they are going to govern. And they expect us to vote for them. Not me, never.

I have not held my breath waiting for something to be done about gun violence. I’m too old to believe that something, anything, would get done. Despite the bi-partisan group trying to solve this, the word gun isn’t even mentioned. Already, the feeble framework they agreed upon has run into some objections from Republicans. In any case, they are hardly talking about anything serious. What about the reported 400 million guns already in homes around the country? They, too are available to the violent.

 I suggest the following, which would not violate the so-called right to bear arms and the sanctity of the 2nd amendment. First, all guns should be registered in a national registry. Second, every gun owner must have liability insurance. And make the penalty severe for not doing so. I’m sure the insurance companies would love this and the premiums set by the insurance industry would certainly discourage (but not prevent) gun ownership. Perhaps, in the interest of national security, the President could impose this with an executive order. 

Another point, one congressman ( I don’t remember who) proposed a bill imposing a 1000% federal tax on guns purchased. He suggested that it could be passed using reconciliation (simple majority) since it’s a financial bill. What happened to it? It could be very effective limiting purchases.

American exceptionalism? Guns and Trump! We should be proud.