FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz August 2, 2021 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (The Borowitz Report)—In what is being called a widespread e-mail scam, millions of Americans have been tricked into sending money to a person claiming to have been elected President in 2020. According to Harland Dorrinson, who heads up the National Internet Scam Bureau, the person sending the hoax e-mails claims to have had an election stolen from him and to be in desperate need of cash. “The e-mails look very official, so it’s not surprising that so many people have been taken in,” Dorrinson said. The scam expert said that those receiving the e-mails should take a close look at the sender’s name. “The actual President of the United States is named Joe Biden,” he said. “If the name of the person on the e-mail is something different, then it’s a fake.” If you receive one of the fraudulent e-mails, Dorrinson said, under no conditions should you give the sender your credit-card number or any other financial information. “E-mails from a Nigerian prince are more legit,” he said. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

August 2, 2021 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate As a powerful complement to the United Nations, the G20 has acquitted itself well by representing most of the world’s population and economic output with a limited membership. By expanding to include the African Union, it would overcome its biggest limitation without any loss of agility. NEW YORK – The Group of Twenty has become a pillar of multilateralism. Although the world has many high-level talk shops, the G20 represents the best kind, actively supporting global dialogue, debate, and – most importantly – economic problem solving. Fortunately, its biggest limitation – that it leaves out 96% of Africa’s population – can be easily remedied by including the African Union (AU). To be sure, since the early post-World War II era, multilateralism has worked mainly through the United Nations system. With 193 member states, the UN offers the singular, indispensable venue for creating and implementing international law. Though the UN is frequently undermined by the unilateralism of the United States and other major powers, it remains essential for global survival. At around $3 billion per year, its paltry core budget is perhaps one-tenth what it should be, and it is chronically underfunded. Still, it manages to make enormous and indispensable contributions to peace, human rights, and sustainable development. But the G20, too, has come to fill a critical role. Representing the world’s 20 largest economies, it enables more flexible and quicker problem solving. When the UN grants each of its members ten minutes to speak on an issue, the remarks take 32 hours; when the G20 goes around the table, it takes just over three. And while the G20’s decisions do not have the force of international law, they can and do support corresponding UN processes, such as on climate change and development finance. Another talking shop is the G7, which was launched in 1975 to bring together the world’s highest-income economies. In 1998, I recommended doubling the group’s size (by then it had become the G8, with the addition of Russia) to include eight major developing economies. A G16, I argued, “would not seek to dictate to the world, but to establish the parameters for a renewed and honest dialogue” among developed and developing countries. Soon thereafter, the G20 was created to play that role. It emerged first in 1999 as a gathering of finance ministers, and then evolved into a meeting of heads of state and government in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, the G7 has become increasingly unrepresentative and incapable of decisive action (leading me to argue earlier this year that it should be scrapped altogether). The current G20 comprises 19 national governments plus the European Union. (Since France, Germany, and Italy are G20 members in the EU, they are in effect represented twice.) The EU’s inclusion in the group was a masterstroke. Because the EU coordinates economic policies across its 27 member states, the European Commission, its executive arm, can credibly speak for the bloc on economic issues of global concern. Moreover, the G20 process in turn strengthens the EU’s internal coordination efforts, ultimately redounding to the benefit of its 27 members. The G20 therefore represents 43 countries (27 EU members plus 16 non-EU countries) with just 20 leaders at the table. While those 43 countries constitute just 22% of UN members states (by a raw count), they nonetheless include about 63% of the world’s population and 87% of gross world output. Though the 43 countries represented at the G20 table don’t speak for the other 150 UN member states, they account for enough of the world’s people and economic activity to have a solid basis for deliberating on global challenges. But by excluding almost all of Africa, the group vastly underrepresents Africa and the world’s low-income countries. The AU’s 55 countries (more than one-quarter of UN members) are home to 1.4 billion people (17.5% of the global total) and $2.6 trillion in annual output at market exchange rates (almost 3% of world GDP). All told, Africa currently has roughly the same population as China or India, and an economy that would come in eighth – just behind France and ahead of Italy – in a country ranking. Africa’s share of the world’s population and output will grow in future years. The G20’s sole African member, South Africa, has the 39th largest economy in the world, the smallest among the G20 member states. The GDPs of Nigeria and Egypt are actually larger than South Africa’s, but they still are not in the world’s top 20. As a result, African leaders outside of South Africa have been invited to the G20 only as observers. Africa’s very limited representation drastically limits Africa’s input in G20 deliberations on major global economic issues, not only at the annual G20 summits but also in the year-round ministerial and technical meetings. The key to the G20’s effectiveness is that it achieves a very high and representative coverage of the global population and economy with a modest enough number of leaders at the table to enable speed and flexibility in deliberation and decision-making. Including the AU would satisfy both criteria: vastly increased representation with just one added seat at the table. The group suddenly would represent 54 more countries, 1.3 billion more people, and $2.3 trillion more output, with just ten minutes added to a round-of-table discussion. Moreover, admitting the AU to an expanded G21 would have the same galvanizing effect within Africa that the EU’s participation in the G20 has within Europe: it would strengthen policy coordination and coherence across the 55 African economies. With multiple urgent challenges on its plate this year, the G20 would benefit enormously from the AU’s immediate membership. Key priorities include achieving universal vaccine coverage to prevent more COVID-19 deaths and the spread of new variants; introducing new measures to mitigate the long-term economic damage inflicted by the pandemic; and securing mid-century decarbonization commitments from all countries and regions to avoid a climate disaster. Since the G20 is such an important venue, other aspiring members doubtless will be knocking on its door. The group will have to balance the benefits of wider representation against the benefits of a smaller, more agile membership. When it comes to the AU, the choice is obvious. A new G21 could then tell other aspirants to seek representation through similar regional delegations – such as ASEAN for the 661 million people in those ten southeast Asian countries, or a similar grouping for Latin America. This year, the G20 is in the highly capable hands of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Italy can use its presidency to leave a lasting legacy. By inviting the AU to join the upcoming summit in Rome in late October, it could make a significant contribution to building a more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable world. Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

By Josh Van Gundy As with most people during the pandemic, I had a lot of extra time on my hands. I did the usual, shopped around for hobbies and learned new skills. For a time, I was deluded enough to think I was going to get into miniatures. I wanted to recreate the street we lived on in Hollywood, 1/16th scale. Clearly, my imagination was larger than my apartment. I switched to something a bit more practical. I learned how to trade options, poorly I might add. But in December of last year, after the vaccines began to roll out and Trump’s presidency was in its death throes, it seemed like the world wasn’t going to fall apart. So, my wife decided it was a good time for a new hobby: making a baby. I work in the entertainment industry, so we’re forced to live in Los Angeles. That means living in an expensive city away from our families, so starting our own family has been an imperative. Having kids was always going to happen next year, after we got that next promotion or bought that house. After a year of loss and fear and not knowing what the future was going to hold, it made us appreciate the time we have, and to make something of the time we have left. That, and even though we were turning the corner on the pandemic, we knew that we wouldn’t totally be out of the woods until the fall or later, so why not take advantage of all this time inside? Let’s do it. Let’s make a baby. We decided to start trying in the new year. My wife assumed that because I’m “so old” - I’m 37, she’s 32 - that it would take a while to get pregnant. She tried to lower my expectations for conception, telling me it’s normal for a man my age to take six months or more to get the job done. In the face of six months of wanton sex with my wife, I was able to muster a brave face, “Even if it takes a year, we’ll keep trying.” We conceived the first time out. All those years of practice paid off, I guess. Me, a triptegenarian, inseminated my wife after only one try. It was a miracle. We didn’t know what to think at first. I remember my wife declaring she “felt” the implantation of the fertilized egg, and I thought she had lost her mind. After the lowering of expectations, I was keen to not let hers get too high, either. I got a three-pack of the pregnancy tests, fully expecting to have to do this every month. I guess we’ll use the other two for the next kid. I remember staring at the test, watching the second blue line slowly get darker and darker. We both shrugged, “I guess we’re pregnant?” It didn’t feel real yet. Since we didn’t get a chance to ease into the idea of having a kid, we went into overdrive. We moved to a nicer neighborhood, into a two bed with a washer/dryer in unit. We got all the baby books. Watched all the YouTube videos. Consulted every person who has had a baby. We engorged ourselves with pregnancy and baby information. The list of “bests” quickly started. We needed the best OB to deliver the baby. We needed the best stroller, to make our lives easier. The best car seat, to keep our baby safe. Bottles. Diapers. Doulas. Natural birth or epidural? The best. The best. The best. This kid is going to have the best. It still didn’t feel real, though. Like we were doing all this research for someone else. We thought it would be more real once we had the first ultrasound. We were worried that I wouldn’t be able to be in the room for the OB appointments because of Covid-19, but as our pregnancy progressed, the restrictions loosened, so I’ve been able to go to every appointment. We have to wear masks, but that’s no bother. The day of the first ultrasound, I was both excited and nervous. Excited it was finally going to be real, and nervous for the same reason. Were we really doing this? Am I ready? Is this kid going to hate us for bringing him into a world where the planet is boiling, democracy is crumbling, and there are nine Fast and the Furious movies? I felt if I saw the kid, or at least the semblance of a baby growing inside my wife, that somehow it would all snap into place, and I would ascend to fatherhood right there in the room. I eagerly awaited as the doctor swooshed away the ultrasound wand looking for the little tyke. What I came to understand is that, at eight weeks, the baby doesn’t look like much of anything. The doctor is pointing and saying, “That’s the head,” and taking measurements, and all I can see is two gray blobs that may or may not be what she’s talking about. My wife began to tear up, and she looked at me and said, “It’s our baby.” I’m a terrible liar, so over the years I’ve learned to not even try, but I don’t want to tell her I don’t see anything. I want to share in this moment too. I think I was looking so hard at the image on the screen that it turned into a Rorschach test, and I saw what I wanted to see. My mind pieced together the pixels as best it could to make a face. Horrifyingly, it looked like a bat face, and because I have no filter between my brain and my mouth, that’s exactly what I blurted out. “It’s got a bat face.” Don’t worry, my wife is used to it. There was no emotional scarring. I’m not an insensitive person. I know I’m not supposed to make jokes about that which we hold sacred… but sometimes, I can’t help myself. The words “bat face” kept rattling through my head, and inevitably, I started singing Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” which of course has a line that goes: “roly-poly little bat-faced girl.” I played the song all the time. To the point that my wife told her mother about it. Now, an important piece of information: My wife is Chinese. Her family is Cantonese, and apparently in their culture, it is customary to hang a picture of beautiful babies in your room when you are conceiving in order to ensure your child is born beautiful and healthy. After we were married, my wife’s mother gave us a poster with two highly airbrushed babies on it to hang over our bed. I refused to put it up. Pictures of babies don’t really put me in the mood. Our compromise was that the poster was in the room, just rolled up and in the closet. That totally counts. Well, now that I had made too much of a joke of our baby’s potential looks, my mother-in-law insisted we hang the poster. It’s prominently positioned over our headboard, and ironically enough, it’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen. We decided to hold off on telling most people until after the first trimester, which gave us enough time to find out the sex of the baby before we told people. We are completely befuddled by “gender reveal parties”, so we’ve been telling everyone the sex of the baby without any fanfare. To us, it’s not a piece of information worthy of a party. Do people really care and highly anticipate finding this out? All we cared about was that the baby was healthy. Finding out the sex didn’t help make it more real for me. This generic baby now had genitals, which presented a new problem. Do we circumcise? We’re having a difficult time determining whether to snip the little fella. We’re told that circumcising for hygiene reasons is wildly overblown. It is not difficult to clean. My sister is a nurse and said that it does become an issue for older men with uncircumcised penises. Okay, so later on in life, but that doesn’t mean they’re inherently unhygienic. Leaving him uncircumcised could have other drawbacks, though. For instance, in America, uncircumcised penises are uncommon, and anything that is uncommon becomes an outlier, and labeled weird or undesirable. Keep in mind, I’m only 5’7”, and my wife is 5’0”, so our son, at best, will be around 5’7”. I never had to deal with the dating apps, but I hear that people are heightest when selecting a man based on purely superficial reasons. So, if our son turns out to be only 5’5”, and he makes it over the hurdles of being short and an Asian man–who are the least selected men on dating apps–we would really hate for him to drop his pants and scare away a prospective partner with his uncircumcised dingus. Now, we never thought we’d worry so much about our son’s future sex life, but it doesn’t seem crazy to take it into account. For these reasons we felt, yes, he’ll be circumcised, but after we spoke to a lot of my friends and finding out who is and isn’t snipped, much to the horror of my wife, we’re thinking maybe we won’t. They don’t even give the baby anesthetic when they do it, which seems barbaric, not to mention the fact they’re cutting his genitals. And we found out that more couples are opting to not circumcise, so maybe it won’t be such an uncommon thing in twenty years. We still haven’t come up with a good answer for this yet. Thinking about these kinds of things started to make him more of a person. More real. But it wasn’t until we landed on a name that it all clicked for me. It’s a perfect name. There’s something about giving him a name that suddenly imbued my wife’s belly bump with personhood. He’s real now. A name suddenly gave him personality. I can see him. I walk around the house referring to him by name. I daydream about playing in the backyard with him. Kicking around a soccer ball. Taking him to a Dodgers game. Watching my favorite stand-up comedy specials with him. Imparting advice. Imagining how I’d discipline him, but always use it as a teaching moment. Will I be as patient as I am in my daydreams? Will I be as kind? As loving? I think so. My daydreams have turned to dreams when I sleep. It’s like he’s already here, but a ghost at the same time. I just want him to be here already. I can’t wait to meet my new best friend, Miles. Only three more months to go! Josh Van Gundy is a military veteran from the suburbs of Detroit. He moved to Los Angeles in 2013 after graduating from Columbia University, where he majored in philosophy and film. He soon began working in production on such shows as The Fosters and Good Trouble, while writing several feature screenplays and pilots. He married the ever-patient Karen Huynh in 2018, who works as a housing policy consultant. He was a 2019 WGA Veterans Writing Fellow. He co-created the television series Camp Victory, an animated comedy about his experiences while deployed to Iraq as an intelligence analyst. Starburns Industries is attached to the project as the animation studio. Most recently, he was hired as a Consulting Producer by The Great Company to write the pitch for their miniseries Vincent, the true story of the brutal murder of Vincent Chin.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 44 By Laurence Lerman Unless you’re a serious consumer of fright film fan sites, you probably haven’t heard about the discovery in 2017 of a lost work by George P. Romero, horror cinema’s late filmmaking maestro. The short feature The Amusement Park, premiered on the streaming channel Shudder last month with the suddenness of a zombie siege, the kind that Romero first unleashed on the world back in 1968 with his landmark debut, The Night of the Living Dead. As is typical with the excavating a presumed dead cinematic artifact (a celluloid zombie!), the story behind the production is as intriguing as the movie itself. Back in 1973, Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead was still just a midnight attraction, one of a handful of films that helped to forge the late-night movie circuit and its ensuing popularity with student and cinephiles. (My first midnight movie was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1970 avant-garde acid western, El Topo, seen at the witching hour in a local Allentown, Pa. cinema in 1980.) But even as The Night of the Living Dead grew in popularity in the early Seventies, it was still nearly a decade away from attaining the standing and legacy that would ultimately recognize it as the undisputed progenitor of the modern zombie film. Coming off his poorly received, supernaturally tinged drama Season of the Witch in early 1973, the Pittsburgh-based Romero, who generally funded his own films, found himself scavenging for work. He hired himself out to direct eight episodes of a sports documentary series, The Winners, that same year, as well as a TV doc on O.J. Simpson. Then the most unlikely client imaginable, Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, approached the filmmaker and commissioned him to make an educational film about elder abuse and how society discriminates against its older citizens (or “ageism,” a term that wasn’t heard that often way back in the 20th century). The result was The Amusement Park. The Lutheran moneymen quickly decided that it wasn’t what they were looking for, prompting them to shelve the film—and leave it to disintegrate. For his part, Romero, following a minor protest, moved on to his next project just a few weeks later, the 1973 bio-hazard shocker The Crazies, which has since become a cult favorite and inspired a 2010 remake. They did use [it] initially,” said Romero’s widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, of The Amusement Park and its unenthusiastic producers in a recent interview. “But I suspect that they thought it was a little edgier than they would have liked.” The Amusement Park was thought to have been lost until a pair of washed-out16mm prints were discovered four years ago, almost a half-century later. They were given to Desrocher-Romero and she, along with the George A. Romero Foundation, oversaw a 4K restoration of the film. The short film made its official theatrical premiere in Pittsburgh on October 12, 2019. And now it’s available for all to see on Shudder. So, what’s it all about? Clocking in at 52 minutes, The Amusement Park opens with its star, actor Lincoln Maazel, looking spiffy in a white suit and matching shirt and tie, walking down a rain-slicked street and talking directly to the audience about how the elderly are prevented from fully participating in and enjoying society. “Remember, as you watch the film, one day you will be old,” he concludes, as he enters a sterile white room, bizarrely encounters a battered, bloodied and haggard doppelgänger of himself, opens a door and walks through it into the titular amusement park. The next 40 minutes see our guide attempting to enjoy the park’s attractions as he weaves his way through one surreal and uncomfortable situation after another. Our man in white witnesses the park’s elderly patrons being abused and taken advantage of—pickpocketed by youths, menaced by bikers, receiving poor first aid, ticketed by policemen while driving bumper cars, being forced to answer insurance questions from park employees. By the film’s second half, the host, too, begins to be abused and humiliated by those around him, beginning with young diners at an outdoor eatery insisting that his table be turned around so they don’t have to watch him eat. By the time he stumbles into a funhouse geriatric ward complete with canted angles and funhouse mirrors, it’s not a surprise to see the Grim Reaper popping up to make his presence known. Then the poor guy is beaten up and bloodied by a gaggle of bikers is almost an afterthought at this point. By the end, the park denizens’ callous treatment of the elderly in body, mind and spirit finds our host being shunned and ignored to the point where he doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s a creepy vibe that immediately reminds one of the cancel culture of today and how it’s unleashed with nary a nod toward consideration, sympathy or forethought. Filmed in the grainy 16mm stock that was de rigeur for the industrials of the era, with camerawork that vacillates between shaky and laconic, The Amusement Park is an uncomfortable, unsightly and often nightmarish little film. (Fun factoid: the cinematography is credited to the late Bill Hinzman, the cemetery zombie of Night of the Living Dead fame.) It makes its point, no doubt about it, but it sure isn’t the kind of educational production that a theologically-based team of producers would be eager to let out into the world. As is his wont, Romero was clearly taking swings—both satirical and serious—at a very real issue with this film, just as he did in his first three (and most popular) zombie movies: the Vietnam and Civil Rights Movement undertones in Night of the Living Dead; the sly take on rampant consumerism of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead; the failure of the military-industrial complex in 1985’s Day of the Dead. Clearly an “educational ” horror film with a message, The Amusement Park is a welcome addition to the lengthy filmography of an artist whose work, like that of many outstanding horror auteurs, isn’t generally looked upon as vital or substantial. It’s strange how the horror genre remains on the outer rim of film scholarship—that the art of scary movies isn’t taken as seriously as other kinds of films. Being praised as influential, particularly in the case of Romero or a contemporary like Dario Argento, is often as good as it gets for a horror specialist. The Amusement Park won’t change that perception, but it’s a fascinating curio with a helluva bite. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Victoria Rolfe Unbelievably enough, our final full month of summer is upon us. Although we have been picking and eating our produce since those first tender lettuce leaves and radishes in the spring, it seems that suddenly our gardens burst forth at this time of year, exploding with a generous bounty of fresh vegetables to harvest by the basketful. In August, it can actually be hard to keep up with all those zucchinis, summer squashes, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, and tomatoes, in addition to the ongoing lettuce, carrots, beets, kale, and other greens. Remember to continue to pick early and often for continued production. At this point, as the bowls of produce begin to pile up in your kitchen, you may find yourself unable to keep up with eating your cornucopia of garden delights. You can, of course, share the bounty with appreciative neighbors and friends. But try not to burden them with too much of a good thing, especially that (sometimes dreaded) prolific zucchini — especially the ones that grew to the size of baseball bats before you got out there to pick them! If you have ever lived outside the city, you know that August is notorious in the country for door-and-dash (surprise!) secret deliveries of baskets of squash to unsuspecting neighbors. But rather than devising ways to give away all of our excess produce, we want to think in terms of how we can make use of it. Waste not, want not, right? We should be making the most of what nature has given us and use it to the fullest. One way to preserve the harvest and make it last into the future is to freeze your garden veggies. There are a great many homegrown vegetables that can be frozen for use during the rest of the year. These include carrots, beets, green beans, cabbage, tomatoes, and yes, even that zucchini and summer squash. Most vegetables will not do well if frozen raw. They will require blanching (partial cooking) first. This process is very simple and only requires a few minutes of cooking time. Put a pot of water on to boil and then chop your veggies into the desired shape and size for freezing. Immerse them into the boiling water for just 2-3 minutes. Then remove them and plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking process. Do not place them immediately into freezer bags and containers or they will stick together, but rather lay them out to dry on paper towels or newspapers for a little while. Then place them on a cookie sheet in a single layer in the freezer. Once frozen, put them in a Ziplock baggie or freezer container. This way they will freeze individually and it will be easy to take out just the amount you want for your future recipes. Don’t forget to label! Your thawed vegetables will not be used as you would raw vegetables, but for cooking recipes instead. There are a few vegetables that allow you to forgo the blanching process when freezing, making it even more simple to preserve them. You can slice up tomatoes and place them raw directly onto the cookie sheets in the freezer or, even simpler, if they are small you can just freeze them whole. As they lose their raw consistency upon thawing, these too will be used only for cooking. You can also do this with cut peppers as well. And while sliced zucchini and yellow squash do require blanching, if you want to grate them, you can freeze them in this manner without it. Another option that I often employ is to cook recipes and freeze the entire dish to enjoy a ready-made meal later in the year. This works well with things like eggplant parmesan, zucchini pie, stuffed peppers, homemade tomato sauce, lasagna, and other casseroles. One more option is to can your produce. If you want to invest in some canning equipment, this is an excellent way to preserve much of your garden’s bounty. Keep your eye out for bargains on supplies. There are many people out there who are done with their gardening and canning years, so remember to ask around and check things like yard sales or Facebook Marketplace for some free stuff if you decide to give canning a try. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully for the safety of your canned products. Well, this should prove to be a very busy month for you in the garden (and kitchen), but it is a delightful busy-ness as you savor all the aromas and rich flavors of your delicious bounty. Happy gardening and bon appétit! Victoria Rolfe has had a love of gardening all her life, from the time she was a tiny child coveting the daffodils growing in her neighbor’s yard (and wondering why she couldn’t have them in her own), to her teenage years when she took her pot experimentation in a different direction by growing the seeds she extracted from the bag into a beautiful marijuana plant on her bedroom windowsill. She went on in her adult years to feed her family by growing a huge and bountiful vegetable garden, as well as beautifying her three-acre property with an array of ornamental trees, bushes and flowers in the magnificent Hudson Valley region of New York. Victoria learned a great deal in the process of all this plant experimentation. She then added to that knowledge by taking courses with the Cornell Cooperative Extension to become a Master Gardener Volunteer. In her volunteer capacity, she helps to educate the public on gardening through classes and information booths, most notably at the Dutchess County N.Y. Fair each August. Throughout the summer months, Victoria is most likely to be found among the weeds, either in her own garden or those of others who actually pay her to play in their dirt and do the thing she loves best, delight in the magical world of gardening. Victoria is not only a gardening aficionado; she is also passionate about helping people live a better life on less money. Visit her website and blog at brightfuture2budget4.weebly.com, or email her at brightfuture2budget4@gmail.com.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Warning: this column is not for the faint of heart. But someone’s got to say this, because it’s a matter of life and death. If you don’t want to get vaccinated—if despite everything that’s been publicized about the dangers of Covid-19, you won’t even wear a mask—then go ahead. Get the virus, for all I care. But do it quickly and stop endangering the rest of us by escalating the spread of the extremely contagious Delta variant. Stop endangering people who have been vaccinated and are taking appropriate precautions but have underlying conditions that make their resistance to the virus less than adequate. Stop endangering even those of us who are vaccinated and do not have such underlying conditions. I am not addressing those of you who want to get vaccinated but for a variety of reasons have trouble getting access to the vaccine. Or those few who have a legitimate medical reason they cannot tolerate a mask or vaccination. But to those who refuse the vaccine because they’re in love with Donald Trump’s fascism and to those who the media are calling “vaccine hesitant,” I would say: the vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson have been in use for many months. The side effects have been minimal, especially compared to the danger of illness and death from Covid. And there are plenty of reliable scientific and medical sources that anybody can now access for good, solid information. There is no excuse for getting your information by rumor from your brother-in-law or your neighbor or some Facebook post on the Internet—or Fox News for that matter. Although now, mirabile dictu, Fox and the scrum of right-wing politicians who make a living off of that misinformation, are finally recognizing that Covid is killing off their pool of voters. They have abruptly, belately, changed their tune and are also suddenly pushing people to get vaccinated. Due to the emergence of the Delta variant and the number of unvaccinated people, Covid numbers are again on the upswing around the nation. Confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide quadrupled in July, from about 13,000 cases per day at the start of the month to more than 54,000 now. The highly contagious Delta variant now comprises more than 80 percent of the nation’s new cases. According to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), new data shows the Delta variant, now the dominant strain in the US, behaves “uniquely differently from past strains of the virus,” indicating that some vaccinated people infected with that variant “may be contagious and spread the virus to others.” The CDC is now recommending that everyone wear masks indoors and in locations with high Covid transmission rates, whether vaccinated or not. So are an assemblage of others. Nearly 60 major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, and the American Hospital Association are calling for mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers. Though some healthcare systems—Houston Methodist, New York-Presbyterian, and Mayo Clinic—have imposed a mandate, many private health care companies have not yet done so. According to data collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and analyzed by Leading Age, which represents nonprofit nursing homes and other elder care providers, more than 38 percent of nursing home staff were not fully vaccinated as of July 11. According to the American Hospital Association, fewer than 9 percent of hospitals had required their workers to get vaccinated as of last week. Some institutions gave as the reason for their delay their lack of sufficient staff members and fear of losing more staff if they mandated vaccination. Some cited a fear of lawsuits by employees. Nevertheless, this exposure of patients and the vulnerable elderly to unvaccinated healthcare workers is particularly unconscionable. It is shocking that medical personnel and major medical facilities have not already required vaccination for those that come into contact with patients. Vaccination Mandates: While the Biden administration has taken the position that it is not the federal government’s place to impose a nationwide mandate for the public, it is doing so for federal workers. On July 29, President Biden announced that every federal government employee will be asked to attest to his or her vaccination status. (It is unclear what is meant by “attest,” but let us hope that better proof will be required than a mere declaration.) Employees who refuse to attest to being fully vaccinated will be required to wear a mask on the job no matter their geographic location. They also must remain physically distant from all other employees and visitors, comply with a weekly or twice-weekly Covid test, and will not be permitted to travel for work. Federal contractors will also be required to ensure their employees are vaccinated. The Department of Veteran Affairs is imposing its own mandate, requiring front-line workers, including physicians, dentists, podiatrists and registered nurses, to get fully vaccinated within the next eight weeks. Whoever fails to do so will face penalties including possible removal. Federal workers will be able to appeal vaccine mandates based on legitimate medical or religious reasons and receive due process. The armed forces are adding the Covid vaccine to the vaccines those in the military are required to take. As for state and local action, New York and California are leading the way. California Governor Gavin Newsom is requiring California’s 246,000 state employees to verify that they’ve been vaccinated or face regular testing. Newsom is also instituting partnerships with private companies to do the same. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has stated that New York’s state employees will be required to show proof of vaccination or face weekly testing. Healthcare workers at hospitals who deal directly with patients will be required to be vaccinated without the option of substituting regular testing. New York City is requiring all municipal workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by mid-September or be tested weekly. This includes school educators and staff, the Police Department, the Fire Department, and all other city agencies. Mayor Bill de Blasio has also requested private employers to set vaccine mandates for their workers. Some experts have urged de Blasio to be even more aggressive, arguing that the new rules may amount to a testing mandate, not a vaccination mandate, and that weekly testing will not sufficiently control the highly infectious Delta variant. In the private sector, Morgan Stanley, the Washington Post, Facebook, Google and Netflix have now said they will require employees to be vaccinated, with limited exceptions for medical or religious reasons. More than 600 universities have announced mandates for students or employees. Broadway theater owners and operators will now require performers, backstage crew, theater staff and theatergoers to be vaccinated and wear masks in order to attend performances. Children too young for vaccination will be allowed to attend if accompanying adults present proof that the child has had a recent negative Covid test. But the Metropolitan Opera plans to bar children who are too young to be vaccinated. Though the National Football League (NFL) has not mandated vaccination, it is imposing restrictions and financial penalties on players and their teams for games canceled because of outbreaks caused by the unvaccinated—exerting a very effective monetary pressure on players and staff to get vaccinated. Opponents of Vaccine Mandates James Bopp, Jr., a lawyer for eight students opposing Indiana University’s vaccination mandate is representative of the opposition. He maintains that their case turns on the right to “bodily integrity and autonomy.” According to the New York Times, Bopp, who works with America’s Frontline Doctors (an organization questioning coronavirus vaccines and promoting alternative treatments) has argued that the government is “forcing you to do something you strenuously object to, and having your body invaded in the process.” The federal district court judge in that case weighed individual liberty against public health and found for the university. The students are appealing. I agree with the judge’s decision. With serious, life-threatening epidemics, it is appropriate for public health concerns to take precedence. But even apart from that question, Bopp’s argument doesn’t hold water. No one is forcing any of us to have a vaccine injected into our bodies. No one is being held down while a needle is forcibly stuck into his or her arm. You have a choice—in fact, multiple choices. You can: (a) get the vaccine; (b) get tested regularly for the virus; or (c) choose not to attend the school or continue in a job that requires vaccination. As French President Emmanuel Macron said forcefully in late July: “What is your liberty worth if you tell me you don’t want to get vaccinated? And tomorrow, you infect your father, your mother or myself. I am a victim of your freedom.” The bottom line? If you are unvaccinated, you pose a threat not only to yourself but to others of spreading Covid, and thwarting the ability of society to ever escape the virus and its variants. Although individual liberty is to be prized, your freedom must end where it infringes on mine—and definitely where it threatens my health and right to live. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Bonnie Fishman Every morning, when I sit on my splendid front porch on the edge of town in the San Francisco Bay Area, chickens cackling in the backyard (not mine), quail families talking to each other (also not mine), birds flitting from tree to tree in our new fruit orchard, I am filled with gratitude. I say it to myself, or anyone else who happens to be around: This is the life. How fortunate am I. I am leading my best life. I am grateful. I have always been this way, though now that I don’t have the noise of working and raising kids, I’m able to be present with that gratitude. I even have an attitude about it– a proud, take that!, conquering type of attitude. I’m certain that I’m not alone in these feelings, especially as we transition out of a scary pandemic into a more open atmosphere. Those of us who have escaped serious illness or the death of a loved one, we are grateful. Those of us who have survived the economic downturn, we are grateful. Those of us who have shelter and enough food to eat, we are grateful. When did this gratitude begin for me? My parents were both very positive people. They had the can-do spirit on steroids. Nothing was impossible. Dad and his brother built a summer camp post-WWII with a borrowed $12,000 and a dream. Dad was a 26-year-old war veteran. Take some 60 acres in northern Michigan and build a sports camp for boys–who does that? Mom, on the other hand, had her own idea of the can-do spirit. She survived breast cancer at 31 and knew she wasn’t long for this world. With four young daughters to care for, she attacked every type of project around the house. Mom sewed all of our clothes, made every curtain, drape and bedspread, crocheted afghan blankets for every room, built a life-size village in our basement with a working soda shop and a small house with furniture, and adorned Dad’s office, complete with windows and flower boxes. Not to mention that she cooked and baked every day. She truly lived with gratitude, as if each day was her last. That kind of positivity has a lasting effect. The glass has always been half full for me. Be grateful for what you have, don’t begrudge what you don’t. In this emergence from a worldwide epidemic, we collectively have to put on our big girl/big boy pants and move forward even stronger than before. Lucky me, I’m embarking on a life in a new home, a new town near my family. It is a peaceful, stress-free, bucolic existence. So grateful. Simple morning coffee writing my column, an energizing swim in the nearby aquatic center, a quiet lunch of fresh greens accompanied with a bagel slathered with cream cheese and my homemade jam, a visit with my sisters, the chance to communicate with friends back in Michigan. Before I know it, it’s time to cook dinner in my first personally designed kitchen and settle in for the night with a good movie. Many people may find this kind of life too slow, even boring. I find it incredibly satisfying. I have spent most of my life working hard, hustling to get the next gig, driving in rat-race traffic, and traipsing around the world. I don’t miss any of it except the travel part, which I plan to continue once the coast is clear. What is your “gratitude food”? Is it a dessert? A special recipe? Something from childhood? For me and several people close to me, it’s very specific: the cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce at the Bread Basket Deli in Oak Park, Mich., my home town. We eat these blintzes at any opportunity, to celebrate and be grateful. You bought a new house? Cheese blintzes. You sold a house? Cheese blintzes. You got a good report from your doctor? Cheese blintzes. It’s your birthday? Cheese blintzes. To celebrate a good life? Cheese blintzes. What is special about this particular blintz is that the filling is very fluffy, with a pronounced vanilla flavor, one of my favorites. It is quite large. They then fry it in a deep fryer instead of pan fry it, which is the usual home method. Unfortunately, I am unable to get the deli’s recipe. So, I created one of my own. I think these blintzes are a delicious way to be grateful! Cheese Blintzes with Blueberry Sauce Yield: about 10 blintzes Blintzes Filling: 1 lb. farmer’s cheese, room temperature 1 lg. egg 1/4 c. sugar 2 tsp. vanilla Batter: 4 lg. eggs, room temperature 1/2 c. whole milk 1/2 c. water 1 c. flour 1/2 tsp. salt oil or clarified butter for sautéing Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl beating with a wooden spoon until well mixed. Reserve. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and water. Whisk in the flour and salt. Beat well. Allow to rest for at least 30 minutes. To make pancake: Heat a 10” nonstick skillet over moderately high heat. Add a half of a tablespoon of oil or clarified butter. When hot, pour in about 1/4 cup of batter, twisting the pan with your wrist to coat the bottom of the pan. Pour off excess. Turn heat down to medium. Cook until just set. Flip out onto your work surface. If it gets brown, make sure the brown side is facing up. Continue with remaining batter, adding oil only when needed. Assembly: Divide the filling evenly among the pancakes, placing a log-like shape toward the bottom of each one, leaving a 1” inch border. Fold the bottom border over the filling, fold in the sides, and roll up the blintz, working away from you. To sauté: Heat some more oil or butter in the same pan over moderate heat. Add about 3-4 blintzes, seam side up. Cook until golden brown. Turn over and cook the bottom. Serve the blintzes on a plate, seam side down. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. Top with blueberry sauce. Blueberry Sauce 3 c. fresh blueberries, divided 1/2 c. sugar 2 Tbs. water 1 tsp. cornstarch 1 tsp. fresh lemon zest In a small saucepan, combine the 2 cups blueberries, the sugar, water, and cornstarch. Cook over moderate heat until the sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to moderately high. Gently boil the blueberry mixture for about 10 minutes or until thickened. Add remaining blueberries and lemon zest. Cook for 5 minutes more. Pour batter into hot pan, twisting your wrist to coat the bottom Place a log-like piece of cheese filling toward the bottom. Fold in bottom and sides Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By Naomi Serviss I’m worried about Marge. She’s a familiar stranger I encounter daily during my early morning Central Park walks. Said she has an Upper West Side apartment. Marge is always on the move, toting crinkly vinyl shopping bags. Always ready to schmooze and share dog stories. She sips from a large 7-11 coffee. Her favorite spot is in front of the Hippo Playground’s benches. It’s a slightly elevated vantage point. This spot has the best view, Marge enthusiastically proclaims. Often. Marge wore a drab winter coat in the middle of July. She was antsy and distracted. Last week she wheeled black luggage without explanation. Maybe her worldly possessions. Or plastic bottles. I’d pause to chitchat about the virus, lousy humidity and favorite park dogs. I fancy the royal Bernese Mountain dogs. Barry is my favorite. Marge prefers Jagger. She wore a stained, purple unbuttoned shirt over a couple of T-shirts. Her summery turquoise top was stained. Tattered sneakers were giving her foot problems. I urged her to get vaccinated. Don’t get the vaccine, she reported hearing. The vaccine is dangerous, someone said. But wouldn’t tell me where she heard it. I urged her to get one and offered to accompany her. Thanks, but no thanks. A refusenik. Her shoulder-length, dirty brown hair looked more disheveled the other day. Oversized glasses swamped her weathered, pinched face. Her delusions overpowered rational thought. She just finished touring with James Taylor. Marge angrily claimed the landlord was poisoning her. Maybe putting drugs in her food. That’s why I’ve been drinking so much water, she said. Marge took two long pulls from the cold steel fountain inside the gated Hippo Playground. I suggested she visit an urgent care clinic. Ulterior motive: I hoped someone would notice Marge’s homeless vibe and get her help. The paranoid delusions were hard to ignore. “I’m not going to be doing that,” she snapped. Did she have somewhere else to stay? What can I do to help? She raged about horrid siblings. I left. When I was in sixth grade, my best friend Susie taught me a valuable lesson in kindness. She said I looked like Pugsley from The Addams Family. I laughed along with her at the time, but it crushed. My bully older brother amused himself by calling me fat, tubby and other cruel variations. I expected that from him, but Susie? Funny, the things that stick with you. Words can hurt. They can also heal when chosen wisely. Now able to meet friends in the flesh, it’s time to take stock. Speaking strictly for myself. My meditation practice centers me. Reinforces my desire to practice loving kindness. I’m not there yet. Still practicing. We’re all reaching for connection. The plague year of lonely isolation is waning. Fifth Avenue is bustling with buses, cars and crowds. Sometimes serendipity’s byproduct is loving kindness. Yesterday I wore my fire engine red, cartoony Tom & Jerry T-shirt on my morning jaunt. I was close to Summit Rock and taking a breather to feed sparrows. Two women sneakered up the path towards me. I did a double take. Was that woman wearing the same goofy T-shirt? She was! Jessica and I instantly connected. We laughed and took selfies. What are the odds? Serendipity. Jessica, a cantor en route for Shabbat services, invited me to Zoom along. Her loving kindness sparked joy. The rabbi was uplifting and comforting. Jessica’s voice was brilliant, moving and inspiring. She gave me a shout-out at the end. Hi Naomi, good to see you! Come back! A sweet gesture passed over the computer in real time! That’s loving kindness come full circle. A broken park water fountain has been driving me nuts. Every thirsty dog is thoroughly morose. Maybe I’m projecting. Functioning Central Park water fountains should be the norm. That goes without saying. Why did I have to say it more than once? I called 311 and meditated while on hold for 10 minutes. Eventually I was rerouted to the Parks Department. I detailed the fountain fail. Gave a perfect location description. Wanted a time frame. Weeks later an official email blew me off. Paraphrasing: We’ll get to it when we get to it. Then the exchange got really testy. I replied, citing his pompous answer. I wasn’t very kind. But people and dogs (especially the dogs) were suffering! Every morning I now fill my water bottle to capacity and tote a plastic bowl. I’m the town crier of the water fountain: The fountain’s been broken for months! I reported it. I have a bowl and water. Would your dog like some? Most owners without water are grateful. Barry, my favorite Bernese Mountain Dog, slurped the whole thing. Fortunately, my walking partner also brought a full water bottle. Robert retrieved a small plastic bag of sunflower seeds from my backpack and scattered them. A pigeon walked quickly towards us. Long story short: This same pigeon has been waiting for us at 7:15 a.m. this past week. I’ve been bringing multigrain wild bird seed in a baggie. Robert eschews bread, sugar and inorganic products. Is that bird seed organic? he asked. Anticipating another lengthy lecture on coconut oil benefits, I tossed out a quick, Yes, the bird seed’s organic. The well-nourished pigeon waddled over. I named him Scrappy. He vacuumed the seed then chest-blocked an encroaching bird. I’ve turned into the Bird Lady from Mary Poppins! No doubt Scrappy will show up tomorrow. Hopefully Marge does too. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

It’s hard to remember, more than a year and a half later, how frightening the beginning of the pandemic was. As we washed down our groceries, scavenged for hand sanitizer and toilet paper, and bade farewell to our friends and family members, we had no idea of what was in store. Covid-19 was an unwelcome and deadly new guest in our world. The Insider was born in that scary milieu. We were drawn to the name because of its dual meaning. We were people shut in at home, but still trying hard to be on the inside of what was happening. The subtitle on our masthead reflected our plight: “For people who are sheltering in place.” Likewise, our motto– “Hands On the Heart, Six feet Apart”– was an attempt to stay close to the rest of the world, despite practicing masked caution when we infrequently went out. Behind our locked doors, we started to publish. Thank goodness, we are no longer in that dark place. After more than 35 million cases of Covid in the United States and more than 625,000 deaths, we are a sadder but wiser nation. We understand more about how the virus is transmitted and how to better protect ourselves and our loved ones. Against the odds, considering the inept stewardship by the last administration, we now have astonishingly effective—although not infallible—vaccines to protect ourselves with, should we choose to avail ourselves. We also have a caring new President who has acted with haste and competence to rectify the health crisis. Given this social and medical transition, we at The Insider think that it’s time for a journalistic course correction too. We are dropping “For people who are sheltering in place,” because no one is doing that anymore. And instead of “Hands On the Heart, Six feet Apart,” our paean to social distancing, we are changing our motto to Emerge Even Stronger. It conveys our hope that we will all emerge from the pandemic not only intact, but bolder and more unified than ever. We do not mean to imply that the pandemic is over. Far from it. The number of Covid cases are surging again in all 50 states, with mask mandates making an unwanted return in some jurisdictions. The Delta variant is on the rampage, a point which has not been lost on the stock market, which dipped to its lowest level since May this week. Millions of Americans refuse to get vaccinated, as misinformation spreads as quickly as a virus. Again, no one knows exactly what’s over the horizon. It is indisputable that we have hit an inflection point, a transitional moment. Here in Manhattan, Broadway shows are scheduled to open soon, the restaurant scene is hopping, and businesses and schools are regrouping. In short, we don’t expect to go back to Square One. And hope springs eternal—today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell belatedly urged Americans to get vaccinated. So we invite you to emerge even stronger with your friends at The Insider. We promise to keep you on the Inside track!

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Donald Trump is a defendant in so many ongoing lawsuits, one wonders how on earth he can even keep track of them. This handy-dandy guide should help the rest of us keep them all straight. If there’s any justice, our former president will end up in the poorhouse or the pokey. On the civil side, his niece, tell-all author Mary Trump, is suing her uncle and his siblings for fraud and civil conspiracy, alleging that they swindled her out of millions of dollars which she was entitled to after her father’s death. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, and E. Jean Carroll, an established columnist for Elle magazine are each angrily suing Trump for defamation. Each woman had separately accused Trump of sexual assault and Trump had responded with public name-calling and character assassination. Michigan voting rights activists and the NAACP are suing Trump for violation of the Voting Rights Act, based on the intimidation of voting administrators, brazenly pressuring Republicans on Michigan’s state canvassing board not to certify the election totals for Detroit. Two of the U.S. Capitol police officers who were severely beaten during the January 6 coup attempt have filed a suit against Trump for inciting it. Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell have each filed a suit arguing that Trump violated a Reconstruction-era law making it a crime to conspire to prevent elected officials from discharging their duties. Thompson’s suit claims Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers “plotted, coordinated and executed a common plan to prevent Congress from discharging its official duties in certifying the results of the presidential election.” He seeks an order enjoining Trump from future violations. And those are only the civil suits. On the criminal side, Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating whether Trump violated state law by pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” sufficient Trump votes to overturn the 2020 election. In their infamous phone call, Trump pressed: “So look. All I want is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” Charges against Trump–conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference in the exercise of election functions–may be in the offing. Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has opened an investigation into whether Trump’s incendiary language at his January 6 rally constituted criminal incitement. Racine may be considering charges against Trump under a local statute that makes it “unlawful for a person to incite or provoke violence where there is a likelihood that such violence will ensue.” And on July 1, with great fanfare, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office charged the Trump organization’s longtime Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization with 15 counts of financial crimes, including federal tax fraud, falsifying business records, grand larceny and conspiracy. The indictment described a 15-year scheme to provide tax-free benefits to top executives, including Weisselberg, who is alleged to have avoided paying over $1.7 million in taxes. New York Attorney General Letitia James has opened a parallel investigation into whether the Trump Organization manipulated property values to avoid taxes and gain other financial benefits. In May, James said her civil investigation had expanded into a criminal one and would be joined with the Manhattan DA’s inquiry. After the indictment, CFO Weisselberg was speedily removed from his leadership position at dozens of Trump organization subsidiaries. There’s so much speculation on whether Weisselberg, who is 73 years old, will flip on Trump or be willing going to jail for him, that I imagine bookies are taking odds on the matter. Other members of Trump’s family may be in legal trouble as well, including his reputed favorite child, Ivanka. To permit Trump to deduct large payments made to Ivanka as business expenses, the payments were treated as consulting fees. But Ivanka was an executive officer and full-time employee of Trump’s companies, so any consultation by her would be part of her full-time job and payment would be part of her salary, not a consulting fee. (Asked if Donald Trump would take the fall for his children or vice versa, Mary Trump asserted that the relationship between Trump and his children is “entirely transactional and conditional.” She speculated that her cousins would not “risk anything for him, just as he wouldn’t risk anything for them.”) Meanwhile, hotels and residential towers are stripping the colossally large and gaudy letters of Trump’s name off of their buildings. After Trump’s alleged incitement of the Capitol attack, some real estate brokers, lenders, and other businesses cut ties with his organization. You would think dealing with all this would keep Trump and his lawyers busy enough. But you’d be wrong. Trump brought a suit of his own—against Facebook and Twitter—claiming that by blocking his accounts from their platforms, they are denying him his First Amendment right to free speech. Donald Trump has a long habit of bringing frivolous lawsuits to intimidate or silence those who oppose him. But, somehow, I don’t think the heads of these two corporate giants are shivering in their boots about this flimsy case. For starters, the First Amendment to our Constitution only prevents Congress from making any law curtailing freedom of speech. It doesn’t require any private entity to publish or promote anything—let alone aid Trump’s efforts to rile his rabble into some new insurrection based on his lies. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that Facebook and Twitter are nevertheless subject to the First Amendment because they are, in effect, government actors. But the Supreme Court already rejected that argument in a 2019 case, Manhattan Community Access v. Halleck. There, a public access TV channel refused to put a video on the air and banned those who made it from submitting future content. To the former president’s consternation, his handpicked Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote the opinion. Unless Kavanaugh and the rest of the Court twist their analysis of precedent into pretzel-like knots to please Trump (not impossible but, hopefully, unlikely in this particular instance), Trump is out of luck. His time would be better spent attending to a defense against the myriad legal actions piling up against him. The one hole in the dragnet descending upon Trump and his associates is the lack of needed action by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice (DOJ). Instead of investigating the role of Trump and his confederates in the January 6 coup attempt, the DOJ is busy continuing to defend Trump’s alleged right not to be sued for defamation. In her book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, published in 2019, Elle columnist Carroll charged that Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room. In an Oval Office interview in June 2019, Trump claimed Carroll was “totally lying,” that he didn’t know her, and couldn’t have assaulted her because “she’s not my type”. He also made other statements in the national press smearing her integrity and honesty. Carroll then filed a suit against Trump for defamation. Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, had the DOJ argue that Trump could not be sued because his alleged defamatory conduct was committed as part of his official duties as president. A judge reasonably ruled that the president’s statements had no relationship to the official business of the United States and so were not within the scope of his presidential duties. Before Trump left office, the DOJ filed an appeal. That is not surprising. But why, pray tell, hasn’t Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, withdrawn the appeal? Why is Biden’s DOJ continuing to defend the Trump claim that the alleged defamation occurred as part of the president’s official conduct? The DOJ is arguing on appeal that, “Elected public officials can — and often must — address allegations regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for office,” and that “officials do not step outside the bounds of their office simply because they are addressing questions regarding allegations about their personal lives.” Ostensibly, the DOJ is trying to protect the office of the presidency. But such a blind defense of that office regardless of the act committed makes a mockery of the law. It feeds directly into the anti-democratic Trump-Barr position that anything a president does is automatically done in his role as president and therefore protected. Under that theory, Trump could, as he once suggested—shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it—so long as he was president when he did it. Carroll’s lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, tweeted in January: “Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a ‘liar,’ a ‘slut,’ or ‘not my type’ — as Donald Trump did here — is NOT the official act of an American president.” By continuing the Trump administration’s appeal, Attorney General Garland is helping to obliterate the American value that no one should be above the law. Garland also appears to be shying away from investigating what role Trump and his confederates played in the January 6 coup attempt. So far, the DOJ seems to be pursuing only the little fish who mobbed the Capitol and did the dirty work. But the available circumstantial evidence is screaming for a full investigation. Though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is forming a Select Committee to investigate, such probes by Congress are no substitute for a criminal investigation by law enforcement. The DOJ should be investigating why—despite indications of the coming attack so clear that members of Congress and of the public felt grave concern—the usual security measures taken for demonstrations were not employed for the ceremonial Electoral College certification. The DOJ should definitely be investigating why Trump abruptly replaced Secretary of Defense Mark Esper with Acting Secretary Christopher Miller right after he lost the election. It should investigate why Acting Secretary Miller then delayed sending National Guard troops in to support the Capitol police for hours—whether or not that failure was deliberate and whether the delay was coordinated with Trump. Michael Flynn’s brother, Lt. General Charles Flynn, should also be questioned about his role at the meeting where decisions on sending in support were addressed. And the DOJ should certainly be investigating whether the inflammatory language spewed by Trump, as well as his now-disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Representatives Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn at the January 6 rally and/or in the days preceding it amount to criminal incitement. If Attorney General Garland is hesitating for fear that an investigation will appear to be politically motivated or tarred as such by Trump’s minions—that is not an excuse for failing to investigate. If the DOJ does not do its duty, if there is no determination of the degree to which the January 6 coup attempt was coordinated and by whom, if there is no punishment for those who planned it as well as those who carried it out—they will try again. In fact, every repetition of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen is a continuance of that coup attempt, as are all the restrictions Republicans are passing on voting rights. Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion rather than for his many violent crimes. One could persuasively argue that if Trump is prosecuted, convicted and goes to prison for tax evasion rather than for fomenting a coup, it still gets him off the streets. But if we allow those who backed the January 6 coup attempt to present it as having been just a spirited rally that got out of hand, an unplanned riot by malcontents, or a planned attack by just a couple of fringe right-wing groups—if our federal legal agencies cannot even muster the courage to openly acknowledge the circumstantial evidence and follow where it may lead—all the next demagogue will learn from our response is how to better get away with a coup. And the next time, that coup will succeed. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs | CNN.com July 20, 2021 Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His most recent book is "The Ages of Globalization" (Columbia University Press, 2020). The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion on CNN (CNN) - The hilarious 2006 film "Idiocracy" offers a vivid depiction of American politics. The movie is classified as a sci-fi comedy, but it is more like a searing documentary. It almost perfectly describes America's crisis of survival today. In "Idiocracy," set 500 years in the future, America is suffering from famine. Every public function has been turned over to some self-serving corporate interest. A fruit-drink company controls crop irrigation, and the nation's crops are being poisoned by the fruit drink. In the meantime, the public is kept in a state of abject ignorance and distraction by demolition derbies, drugs, and debauchery. The nation is saved when an average joe, miraculously resuscitated from the distant past, reintroduces clean water to the crops, thereby saving the nation. He is hailed as a genius for his simple insight. Which brings us to America's idiocracy in 2021. Our most important public functions are handed over to corporate sponsors. Our entire political system is designed to let corporate money speak, through campaign contributions and corporate lobbying. Instead of famine caused by fruit drink, today's disasters are due to human-induced climate change caused mainly by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). Hundreds of people have already died this summer due to severe weather events linked to climate change. The heatwaves in the Western states and parts of Canada have been relentless, not to mention deadly. The hurricane season arrived a month early in the Caribbean. Extreme flooding in western Europe killed at least 185 people. Yet even as these disasters unfold, the US political system continues to defend fossil fuels. And in the current round, it is West Virginia's two senators, Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin, who are the mouthpieces of the fossil fuel industry. Each has received more than $2 million during their careers in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resource sectors. And each stands shoulder to shoulder with the fossil-fuel industry. Earlier this month, an ExxonMobil lobbyist called Manchin the "kingmaker," and said he is in contact with the senator's office once a week. (As I described in a recent column, ExxonMobil and the lobbyist himself subsequently denied, walked back, and apologized for what the lobbyist said on the covertly recorded tape, so we can rest easy, fellow citizens of our idiocracy!) After President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats on the Budget Committee announced an early agreement on a budget reconciliation package that includes, among other things, provisions to tackle climate change, Manchin predictably raised objections. He said that he was "very, very disturbed" by the provisions he believes would phase out fossil fuels. "I know they have the climate portion in here, and I'm concerned about that," Manchin declared. He continued, "Because if they're eliminating fossils, and I'm finding out there's a lot of language in places they're eliminating fossils, which is very, very disturbing, because if you're sticking your head in the sand, and saying that fossil (fuel) has to be eliminated in America, and they want to get rid of it, and thinking that's going to clean up the global climate, it won't clean it up all. If anything, it would be worse." This is blather. Climate safety requires that the US and the rest of the world decarbonize the energy system. Towards that end, Biden successfully brought together China, Europe, and other countries in April to commit to decarbonizing their economies. Manchin is simply aiming to derail that effort. West Virginia's pro-fossil-fuel politicians have long been a disaster for their own constituents. West Virginia ranks near the bottom of the US in just about every major dimension of wellbeing. In the current US News and World Report ranking of all 50 states, West Virginia ranks 47th in healthcare, 45th in education, 48th on economy, and dead last on infrastructure. The state is also notorious for having the highest number of opioid-involved overdose deaths per 100,000 people. But instead of looking for real solutions for the state, and moving beyond the fossil fuel sectors (which employ less than 2% of the state's workforce), Manchin and Capito are actually trying to slash Biden's plans for federal investments in infrastructure. Of course, the idiocracy extends beyond West Virginia. In the 2020 election, according to OpenSecrets, federal campaign spending reached $14.4 billion, plus another $3.5 billion spent on lobbying last year. With this financing, corporations run the show. Right on cue, Republican senators have now decided to oppose additional funding for IRS enforcement against tax evasion. The American people, and the people of the world, deserve better than an American idiocracy. The US is perilously close to becoming a failed state. Yet the positive message of the film "Idiocracy," should also be clear. Our problems are solvable, if and when an average joe -- even a Joe Manchin -- defends the common good against corporate interests. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/20/opinions/climate-change-corporate-lobbying-fossil-fuels-sachs/index.html