By Andy Borowitz April 4, 2022 ANCHORAGE (The Borowitz Report)—Kicking off her campaign for the United States Congress, Sarah Palin lashed out at the word game Wordle for “using such long words.” “Wordle uses words that are way too long for everyday Americans like me to guess,” she told her audience at a campaign stop in Anchorage. “When I tried to play Wordle, I did the same thing I did as governor—I quit halfway through.” Palin also blasted the publisher of Wordle, her longtime nemesis the New York Times. “Once again, the New York Times is using long words to make me feel bad about myself,” she said. The former governor said that she is unconcerned that fifty other candidates are running for Alaska’s open congressional seat. “Honestly, I can’t count that high,” she said.

By Alan Resnick / Detroit I’m not one of those people whose cell phone is an extension of their arm. I make only a handful of calls each week. I text a little, periodically check my email, and play an occasional game of solitaire. The vast majority of the apps on my phone are rarely if ever opened. But I experienced a feeling of complete panic two weeks ago when I got in my car after leaving a Costco near my home and could not locate my phone. I knew for certain that I’d had it before entering the parking lot, having used it on my drive there. The first thing I did was to check my pants and coat pockets. I felt my keys and wallet, but not my phone. So I shoved my hands into my pockets again, because it had to be there. Then I checked a third time, my unease rising by the minute. Fortunately, the vehicles on either side of mine were unoccupied, so I was spared the indignity of having a stranger watch me frantically and repeatedly thrusting my hands into my pockets and possibly misinterpret what they saw. Well, the phone must have fallen under my seat. So I got out of the car and used the controls on the door to move the seat as far forward and then as far back as possible. No luck. I then wiggled my hand between the seat and the driver’s console, and found nothing but half a pistachio shell and a nickel. Obviously the phone must have somehow jumped off my person and gotten lodged under the passenger seat. But just as I was about to wedge my hand between it and the console, a thought dawned on me: If I simply turned on my car, the information screen would tell me in an instant if my phone was connected. So I started the engine and saw that the phone was not connected. As my heart began to sink, I got out, lay down prone on the pavement, and looked under the car. Still no phone. My typically rational style of thinking was now crumbling under a wave of anxiety. I brushed off my pants and jacket, put my mask on, and walked briskly back into Costco. As I approached the Customer Service desk, one of my best friends was steering his cart out of the building. I gave him a quick: “Hey. See you Saturday” and kept moving while making a mental note to apologize for our brief encounter when I saw him over the weekend. Customer Service directed me to the supervisor’s desk in front of the cash registers, where I was greeted by a fellow named Josh. I told him that I had apparently lost my phone in the store and asked if I could leave my name and number in case someone turned it in. Josh suggested that I first walk through the store and see if I could locate the wayward device. That made a lot of sense to me, so I pulled out my receipt and decided to retrace my steps based on the items listed. My first purchase was the Bouchard probiotic chocolates, but my phone was nowhere to be seen. I then walked to my next purchase, the oven roasted turkey in the upright refrigeration cases. Since the turkey was on the top shelf, I had to step up on the ledge to reach it. As I began to raise my arm, I realized that my phone would have had to defy the law of gravity and fallen upward to be where I was about to look. So I stepped down and berated myself for my stupidity. Visits to the ground turkey and flank steak cases yielded nothing, so I went back to talk with Josh. He asked for a description of the phone, and my name and number, adding: “Don’t give me the number of your cell phone.” Under normal circumstances, Josh’s statement would have provoked a smart-ass response. But since I was the putz who had lost his phone, it didn’t seem like the time for snark. I decided that I would leave my wife’s business number, as it is a land line and I could pick it up whenever it rang in our home. But I couldn’t remember if the last two digits were 30 or 94. What if I gave the fax number instead of the phone? Josh would hear that screeching tone and bury my phone at the bottom of the lost and found pile. So I left my wife’s cell number and crossed my fingers. As I was walking out the door, I suddenly heard Josh’s voice: “Alan, is this your phone?” I turned around, thinking to myself, “It couldn’t be.” It wasn’t. The phone Josh was holding was too large and had an unfamiliar screen image. After walking back to my car and heading home, my thinking became even more disjointed and illogical. What if someone finds my phone and guesses my passcode? I keep no financial information or credit card information on there, but what if somebody sees the username and password to my Netflix or digital New York Times subscriptions? And what of all the inconvenience that lay ahead? Should I just head over to the Apple store and get a new phone? The Genius Bar should be able to access my phone’s contents on my iCloud account … if I can remember the password. But what if they won’t see me without an appointment? Even if they did, I would still have to go to the T-Mobile store and have the phone activated. Maybe I should go to T-Mobile instead and see if they have the phone in stock. But then I’d have to go to the Apple store to get my iCloud information downloaded. Ugh. Perhaps it was best to just go home and wait to see if Josh calls. But what if my wife’s not home and Josh contacts her? Anita won’t be able to reach me until she gets home. And what if she gets home, Josh hasn’t called, and it’s too late to get to the Apple or the T-Mobile stores? I had to work the next day and couldn’t remember all my user names and passcodes because they are on my phone and not anywhere else. Heaven forbid, what happens if I get into an accident on the way home or while driving to Apple or T-Mobile? How do I contact Anita and let her know that I’m O.K. or being taken to the hospital? I wasn’t sure if the other driver would be terribly receptive to me asking, “Sorry for rear-ending you, but can I use your phone to make a couple of calls while you’re waiting for the ambulance?” These and other incoherent thoughts totally consumed me for the 20 minutes it took to get home from Costco. I turned into our driveway and saw my wife’s SUV as the garage door began to open. I parked, took a deep breath, and went into the house, ready to tell her about my ineptitude. But Anita met me with a smile and said, “Josh from Costco called. He has your phone.” I sighed in relief, briefly shared my tale of woe, and returned to my car. And for those next 20 minutes, I was the safest, most attentive driver on the road. I kept my distance from the vehicles in front of me, carefully entered the two roundabouts en route, and made no attempt to beat a stop light that had just turned amber. Just for good measure, I parked toward the end of the Costco lot. After masking up and returning to the supervisor’s desk, I spoke with a fellow named John. (Josh was at lunch.) He went into the back room, brought out what looked like my phone, and asked me to enter my passcode. Voila, it was mine. At home, I went through my phone’s contents to see if there was anything that made me squeamish, and made some deletions for safety’s sake. Then I took out a sheet of paper, wrote down all my user names and passwords for work, and stuck the piece of paper in my wallet. Just in case. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 77 By Laurence Lerman / New York City And now it’s time for a nice little Academy Awards story that has nothing, nothing to do with “The Slap!” At the 94th Academy Awards ceremony held on Sunday, March 25, the fiercely talented London-born costume designer Jenny Beavan won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for her work on the Disney 2021 comedy adventure Cruella, directed by Craig Gillespie. With 11 Oscar nominations and now three Oscars to her credit (including her previous two for the 1985 Merchant Ivory production A Room with a View and 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road), Beavan officially enters the pantheon of honored and respected costuming greats. Most notable among them: Milena Canonera (nine nominations and four wins for Barry Lyndon, Chariots of Fire, Marie Antoinette, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Colleen Atwood (12 nominations and four wins for Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, Alice in Wonderland and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). No, Beavan and company are not yet in the orbit of the late Edith Head and her 35 noms and eight wins (for All About Eve, Roman Holiday and The Sting, among others), but who is? Watching Jenny Beavan, a seasoned, hardworking professional, bring home the gold provided a few pleasant, smile-worthy minutes in a generally lackluster show. Thankfully, the Best Costume Design category wasn’t prerecorded and clumsily shoehorned into the broadcast like eight less-glittery categories were over the course of the evening! The award was presented by the actress Lupita Nyong’o and veteran costume designer Ruth E. Carter (also an Oscar recipient for her work on 2018’s Black Panther) about a half-hour prior to The Slap. Beavan, upon hearing her name victoriously announced, stepped onto the stage clad in a white tuxedo shirt and tricked out, peak-lapel jacket, and profusely thanked her costuming team, whom she described as “the most phenomenal, creative, clever, generous, amazing people.” She also gave earnest shout-outs to the film’s makeup and hair departments, quipping that “It would look a little sad putting on a Cruella costume with my hair.” “The thing about Cruella,” she squeezed in just as she was being played off the stage by some canned music, “is that it does bring a bit of fun and joy during these terrible times.” Cruella is, of course, based on the villainess Cruella de Vil from the Disney films 101 Dalmatians (both the live-action version from 1996 and the classic animated tale from 1961). It serves as an origin story prequel as it follows a young woman named Estella (Emma Stone) in 1970s London who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Landing a job for the demanding and none-too-nice designer known as The Baroness (Emma Thompson), Estella takes on the persona of a designer known as “Cruella” and bursts forth with an outrageous sense of fashion, quickly becoming The Baroness’s arch rival. And, wow, that fashion is all over the screen! Emma Stone’s Cruella wears 47 different costumes in the film, while Emma Thompson’s Baroness is garbed in 33 different outfits. There’s nary a single one on either of them that isn’t eye-catching or elegant or colorful or kaleidoscopic. Even the costuming for a few early sequences set in the grimy post-WWII London of the 1950s features a stylish raggedy-ness! Truly, Cruella’s costuming is as vitally communicative as the dialogue and storyline. Beavan, whose other credits include the musical Swing Kids (1993) Oliver Stone’s epic Alexander (2004), the fantasy adventure The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) and nearly a dozen other Merchant Ivory titles, has more glamour on the way: Still to come are a handful of projects she took on between Cruella and the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road sequel Furiosa, currently in preproduction. Due on screens this summer is the fashion-loving drama Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, directed and co-written by Anthony Fabian and starring Lesley Manville and Isabelle Huppert. It concerns a widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London who falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress and heads off Paris to secure one for herself. And coming to theaters this fall is the World War II drama White Bird: A Wonder Story, directed by Marc Foster and starring Gillian Anderson and Helen Mirren, which tells the story of a young Jewish girl hidden by a boy and his family in Nazi-occupied France. A number of other projects are also beckoning Beavan, who has let it be known in recent months that she is considering stepping away from costume designing. “I get more anxious as I get older and more experienced. I don’t find the job easier,” Beavan told the film industry trade magazine Deadline in December. “I find I get really anxious about whether I’m getting it right, and I’m not entirely sure I need to spend the last few years of my life being anxious.” Offering that the next phase of her life could involve charity work or teaching or other areas that have “nothing to do with costume or theater or film,” Beavan has only positive feelings about her decades-long career and her many collaborators, even as she points out its difficulties. “I’ve had the wonderful luck of working with the top directors and fabulous projects, but it’s not easy. It’s a very tough profession,” she said. “It’s fine when you’re younger and you can sort of bounce off things. But I don’t bounce as much now, both mentally and physically.” The critically praised Cruella grossed approximately $250 million worldwide, was embraced on streaming platform Disney+, and prompted the development of a sequel—along with garnering Beavan an array of awards and a whole lot of fresh recognition. Here’s hoping she’s onboard for a sequel and what could be one helluva pièce de résistance. 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 John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. Just like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it’s always election season in America, and awfully hard to see the difference between that long-running, rambunctiously vulgar sitcom and our nation’s politicians. As soon as one set of campaigns ends, another begins and one wonders how these “public servants” find time to actually legislate and govern. Some don’t seem to bother. They’re too busy spewing insults and throwing attention-getting controversy bombs for the sake of buffing their credentials with their base and enhancing their chances of being re-elected. My nausea and dread grow with the midterm elections approaching in November. Voting systems are in disarray in states where new restrictive laws have caused confusion and redrawn districts are in legal doubt with scant time to correct them, all of this with the customary slate of loathsome morons up for office. Ordinarily, politicians are the very definition of phony, and it has long been painfully obvious that anyone who reaches any height on the political food chain has sold their soul to the special interest devil. But the current breed barely makes even the slightest effort to hide their hypocrisy and self-interest. Facts, reality, knowledge, even simple decency no longer matter to them. Democrats, who are done no favors by shameless creeps like Andrew Cuomo, usually infuriate by talking a good game and delivering crumbs. The Republican Party, however, has become breathtakingly brazen and even incoherent in its Machiavellian quest of power. Spearheaded and personified by the mind-numbingly self-absorbed and abysmally ignorant Donald Trump, the GOP’s “stars” such as (to name just a few) Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Kevin McCarthy plus elder statesmen Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and Rand Paul have become perverse celebrities. They seem to exist simply for the sake of being appallingly outrageous, like the cast in the photo below. It was with great horror that I realized several years ago that these so-called “leaders” are actually a reflection of millions of Americans and not just nefarious shepherds leading an innocent flock off a cliff. And it became increasingly clear to me that the GOP has no plan. Trump’s great new healthcare program that he handed to 60 Minutes anchor Leslie Stahl after an interview in 2020? It turned out to be a box of random documents, or maybe it was frogs. Sen. Rick Scott (R.-Florida) recently announced his “Plan to Rescue America” (from what, sanity?) that would require Congress to re-pass all pieces of federal legislation every five years. Now, that is a brilliant idea when bitter polarization has turned the House and Senate into WWE steel cages. Can’t you just see the gristle and feathers flying each time Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid come up for a vote? As a way to get rid of government programs conservatives have targeted for decades, Scott’s plan is pure genius. From where I sit and scratch my head, the GOP seems mainly interested in obstructing any high-profile thing Democrats favor, even when such things are popular with most of the American people. Republicans spend most of their time trying to make life miserable for certain groups by nixing important things for women (abortion rights) and the LGBTQ community (gay marriage, transgender care) while squashing common sense public health protections like mask and vaccine mandates, social justice and economic relief programs, and discussion of America’s troubled racial history. It’s remarkable to watch a political party work overtime to protect our right to destroy ourselves, others and our environment. Even if Democrats and sensible Republicans try to help average Americans, how many of us care about or even look at the details of boring things like infrastructure and paid family leave proposals? We’re encouraged to focus on bogus culture war issues like Critical Race Theory. So we get a 24/7/365 clown show of rallies and conventions, pandering to wack-a-doodle QAnon conspiracy theorists, and pithy pronouncements like Taylor Greene’s, “Not only do we have the D.C. jail, which is the D.C. gulag, now we have Nancy Pelosi’s Gazpacho Police spying on members of Congress” as well as her warning to transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten to “stay out of our girls’ bathrooms.” Yes, there are still reasonable Republicans out there — Governors Charlie Baker (Massachusetts), Larry Hogan (Maryland) and Phil Scott (Vermont). I like and pity them for the lonely figures they cut. I disagree with Rep. Liz Cheney’s policy positions but I admire how she is courageously defying her party and standing up for democracy after the Trump faction’s Jan. 6 insurrection. Unfortunately, the GOP’s best are buried in the miasma of buffoonery that the media and contemptible talking heads like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson keep on a boil by focusing on childish antics. An independent, I don’t dare vote for even the most rational Republican because I fear they will have to kowtow to the party’s dominant lunatic faction that will make the Jan. 6 and Trump investigations vanish if the GOP reclaims majorities in Congress. Yeah, I actually believed that a violent insurrection based on a repeatedly debunked lie, and a president flouting our laws and rules at every turn, would be a bridge too far for nearly all Americans. Apparently not, and that means the worst is likely to come. What a revolting farce our democracy has become: a cast of charlatans and thieves in a theatre of the absurd. It now costs more than $10 million to win a Senate seat and with it comes the rewards of celebrity, influence and lucrative backroom connections. It truly sickens me that the most vital business of ordinary citizens is decided by such awful people. I totally agree with the assertion that politics is now mostly performance art, a form of entertainment, a largely scripted reality show. To quote the band Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s famous line, “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.” With the November elections coming fast, that show is the political equivalent of Jackass. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts 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."

The U.S. Healthcare System in Comparative View House Oversight and Reform Committee Hearing on “Examining Pathways to Universal Health Coverage” March 29, 2022 The US healthcare system is dysfunctional compared with our peer nations (other high-income democracies). The US system is far more expensive (per person and as a share of GDP) than peer countries. The US health outcomes are far worse. Life expectancy in the US lags several years behind our peer nations. In the US, life expectancy stagnated between 2012 and 2019 at 78.8 years, whereas in the European Union, life expectancy rose from 80.2 years in 2012 to 81.3 years in 2019. (1) The Commonwealth Fund has recently offered a detailed comparison of the healthcare systems of the US and 10 peer (comparison) countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. (2) I will also use these ten countries as the sample of peer countries in my testimony. Some Congressmen claim that there are no true peer countries because the US is larger than the other countries and more diverse. For that reason, it is useful to compare the US healthcare system not only with individual countries, but with the European Union (EU) as a whole.(3) Both the US and EU are diverse, with richer and poorer regions. Yet the EU nations share basic healthcare principles that are far more effective than those of the US. As a result, the EU healthcare system overall is fairer, less expensive, and with comparable or superior outcomes to the US. There are three basic questions about the design of a healthcare system: (1) Who is covered? (2) Who pays? (3) Who sets the prices? The basic difference of the US and the peer countries (and EU as a whole) is summarized in Table 1. These are statements of general principle, with variation among the individual countries. The peer systems can be described as Universal, Public-Payer, and Price-Regulated. They are not systems of socialized medicine, with the exception of the UK National Health Service, which is state-run. In the other countries, healthcare providers are (mostly) non-governmental health professionals such as private doctors, private group practices, and not-for-profit hospitals. The difference between these peer countries and the US is that the peer healthcare workers are remunerated mostly by public funds, whereas in the US, public and private funding are each around half of the total. Public funding in Europe takes two main forms. In the Nordic countries, the UK, and some others, funding comes out of general government revenues. In France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, funding comes from compulsory social contributions, often paid to private, regulated insurers. In all of the peer countries, private health providers face government regulated prices aimed at keeping drug prices and other healthcare costs under control. The specific coverage of these regulated prices varies across countries. The most important comparisons are shown in Figures 1 and 2 and Table 2, taken from the most recent Commonwealth Fund comparison report and Our World in Data. The US spends by far the most on healthcare of any of the 11 countries (Figure 1). As of 2019, health spending in the US was nearly 18% of GDP, compared with 10-12% of GDP in the peer countries. In dollars per capita, the US spending in 2019 was around $10,000 per capita, compared with roughly $4,000 - $7,000 in the peer countries. In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, US national health expenditures rose to nearly 20% of GDP, more than $12,000 per capita. Figure 1. Health Care Spending as a Percentage of GDP, 1980–2019. Notes: Current expenditures on health. Based on System of Health Accounts methodology, with some differences between country methodologies. GDP refers to gross domestic product. * 2019 data are provisional or estimated for Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Data: OECD Health Data, July 2021. Source: Eric C. Schneider et al, Commonwealth Fund, “Mirror, Mirror 2021, Reflecting Poorly: Healthcare in the United States Compared to Other High-Income Countries,” August 2021. Despite these far higher outlays, the US health outcomes are generally comparable or worse than in the peer countries. Life expectancy in the US was 78.9 years in the 2019, while in the peer countries, it was in most cases between 81 and 84 years (Figure 2). The Commonwealth Fund assesses the US to rank last (in 11th place of the 11 countries) in overall health system performance, with a last place in four of the five categories: access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and healthcare outcomes (Table 2). Figure 2. Life expectancy, 1990-2019. Source: Riley (2005), Clio Infra (2015), and UN Population Division (2019). Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Hannah Ritchie (2013) - "Life Expectancy". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy' Table 2. Health Care System Performance Rankings. Data: Commonwealth Fund analysis. Source: Eric C. Schneider et al, Commonwealth Fund, “Mirror, Mirror 2021, Reflecting Poorly: Healthcare in the United States Compared to Other High-Income Countries,” August 2021. Why are healthcare costs sky-high in the US? Voluminous evidence shows that this is due mainly to very high costs of procedures, drugs, and hospital days in the US; in short, to the unregulated pricing of health services. (4) US healthcare providers have enormous market power in their respective catchment areas, with very few providers.(5) Pharmaceutical companies have market power due to patent protection. As a result, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies are able to set prices far above marginal production costs. The drug companies are notorious for price gouging. An infamous recent example was Gilead’s pricing of Sofosbuvir, a drug that the company purchased from the inventor and then marketed at roughly 1000X times the marginal cost, thereby prolonging the US epidemic of Hepatitis C. The company got rich, while US military veterans suffering from Hepatitis C got liver failure. Such price gouging is defended in the name of “innovation,” but this is overly simplistic. Sofosbuvir was developed by academic researchers, and then purchased by Gilead. Consider also Moderna’s lifesaving Covid-19 mRNA vaccine. The NIH funded the basic science of mRNA vaccines for more than a decade, much of which was in partnership with Moderna. Moderna (and BioNTech-Pfizer) walked away with the profits of the mRNA vaccines, while the US government has bought the vaccines at commercial prices. The high prices of healthcare and pharmaceuticals translates into soaring profits and wealth of the healthcare industry. Figure 3 is from a Wall Street Journal report on CEO compensation of large pharmaceutical companies. Note that compensation runs in the tens of millions of dollars, simply staggering sums. Figure 4 reports the salaries of hospital administrators of major not-for-profit hospitals. The salaries are astounding: several million dollars per year. Figure 3.Highest-Paid Pharmaceutical CEOs. Source: Wall Street Journal, 2019. Note: Industry groups defined by Standard & Poor's. Shareholder return reflects 1-year total shareholder return through the month-end closest to each company's fiscal-year end. Data from: MyLogIQ LLC (pay); Institutional Shareholder Services (performance). [Accessed March 29, 2022: https://graphics.wsj.com/table/CEOPAY_slice_Pharma_0606] Figure 4. Top 10 Non-Profit Hospitals (2016-2017). Andrzejewski, Adam et al. “Top 82 US Non-Profit Hospitals: Quantifying Government Payments and Financial Assets.” Open The Books Oversight Report. June 2019. https://www.openthebooks.com/top-82-us-non-profit-hospitals-quantifying-government-payments-and-financial-assets--open-the-books-oversight-report/ Figure 5 shows in simple terms that the high-profits also show up in high stock-market returns. The S&P 500 health sector enjoyed annualized returns of 13% over the past 10 years, the third highest sector, lagging only behind IT and discretionary consumer products. Annualized Equity Returns by Sector (S&P 500). Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices. “S&P Sectors: US Equity.” Last updated February 28, 2022. [Accessed 20 March 2022: https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/index-family/equity/us-equity/sp-sectors/#overview] Another source of high healthcare prices in the US are extremely high administrative costs. As shown in Figure 6, administrative costs among private health insurers averages around 13% of total outlays, compared with around 3% for Medicare. According to the OECD estimates in Figure 7, the US spends around 1.4 percent of GDP, roughly $300 billion a year on administrative costs, while our peer countries spend less than half of that share of GDP. Figure 6. Uses of Premium Revenues in Fully Insured Markets, 2010 to 2012. Data from: Congressional Budget Office, using 2010 filings of the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) and 2011 and 2012 filings of the Medical Loss Ratio Annual Reporting Form (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). Source: Burns A, Ellis P, et al. “Private Health Insurance Premiums and Federal Policy,” Congress of the United States Congressional Budget Office Report, February 2016. www.cbo.gov/publication/51130 Figure 7. Governance and Administrative Costs as Percent of GDP. Source: OECD. https://data.oecd.org/health.htm Shifting to a Universal, Public-Payer, and Price-Regulated system, as in our peer countries, would save a fortune for Americans. Congressional opponents of public-payer system claim that such a move would be “unaffordable,” and often cite a 2018 study by Charles Blahous for the the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University to that effect.(6) The Mercatus Foundation projected that a move to Medicare-for-All (M4A) would add an extra $32.6 trillion over 10 years (2022-2031) to the federal budget compared with the current baseline. Yet the Mercatus study also estimated that non-federal outlays, mainly private outlays, would decline by $34.7 trillion over 10-years, for a net saving in overall health outlays equal to $2.1 trillion. This is summarized in Table 3 (data are in $ trillions). In other words, households would save more by eliminating out-of-pocket payments and private health insurance premia than the government would raise in revenues to fund the public system. The public system would be cheaper for the nation, not more expensive. Table 3. Net Cost Savings Of $2 Trillion in Mercatus Foundation Study There are two more key facts to drive home this crucial point. First, the increased government revenues would presumably be raised through progressive taxation, i.e., from higher-income taxpayers. The working-class households would therefore save twice, first in the reduction of overall health outlays, and second in the shift of financing towards higher-income households. Second, and at least as important, the overall cost saving should be much more than $2 trillion over ten years (though $2 trillion in saving over ten years is nothing to ignore). The shift to M4A should include price regulation, as in every peer country. The US now spends around 20% of GDP on health outlays, while our peer countries spend 10-12% of GDP because of lower unit costs. The US healthcare costs under M4A might not fall all the way from 20% of GDP to 12% of GDP, but it is reasonable to think that the US could get health costs down to 15% of GDP, higher than in the peer countries, but far lower than today. The savings would be then be around 5% of GDP, more than $1.1 trillion at the projected 2022 GDP of $23.7 trillion. These are simply illustrative numbers. The actual saving would be determined by the detailed operation of the new system. The most important determinant of saving would be the pricing regulations introduced into M4A. Note that the single-state experiments in public financing, such as in Vermont, tell us very little about what would happen in a federal M4A system. A state like Vermont is a “price taker” of the exorbitant US healthcare costs. Vermont by itself can’t lower these costs through regulation, because healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies would shift operations out of Vermont. Yet in a federal system, the health providers and drug companies could not shift operations outside of the US, since those overseas markets are already tightly regulated. It behooves us to ask why the US sticks with such a miserably broken and unfair system, one that is literally killing and bankrupting Americans. The answer, alas, is the political power of the healthcare lobby. As shown in Figure 8, using data from OpenSecrets.Org, the healthcare sector is the number 1 economic sector in lobbying outlays, having spent an extraordinary $10 billion on lobbying outlays during the period 1998-2021. The industry is also an extraordinary campaign funder. In the 2019-2020 federal election cycle, health-sector PACs gave $49.2 million in campaign spending, divided roughly equally between Democrats and Republicans.(7) Figure 8. Lobbying by Industry ($billion), 1998-2021. Based on data released by the Federal Election Commission on March 22, 2021. Source: OpenSecrets.org [Accessed March 29, 2022: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/industry-detail/H/2020] (1) See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/life-expectancy/life-expectancy-2018.htm#Table1 and https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_mlexpec/default/table?lang=en for 2019. See (2) Commonwealth Fund, “Mirror, Mirror 2021, Reflecting Poorly: Healthcare in the United States Compared to Other High-Income Countries,” August 2021 (3) The US and the EU are of roughly comparable size. The US has a population of 332 million; the EU, 447 million. The US GDP in 2021 was $23 trillion; in the EU, $17 trillion. (4) See Barber SL, Lorenzoni L, and Ong P. “Price setting and price regulation in health care: lessons for advancing Universal Health Coverage,” World Health Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019. (5) Lin, L and Mrkaic M. “U.S. Healthcare: A Story of Rising Market Power, Barriers to Entry, and Supply Constraints,” International Monetary Fund, 2021, 55 p. https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513585451.001 (6) Blahous, Charles, “The Costs of a National Single Health-Payer System,” Mercatus Working Paper, July 2018 (7) See https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/industry-detail/H/2020

By Victoria Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. As we sit and watch world events unfold around us–from deadly disease, to war, to political strife–we often feel helpless in the face of it all. And at the same time we are witnessing the suffering of others abroad, we are hit at home with our own (less earth-shattering, thankfully) household challenge. You can’t escape it. It’s all over the news. And even if it weren’t, your pocketbook is telling you. The cost of many things is going up. Well, if there were ever a time to adopt a frugal lifestyle, it might as well be now. Let’s go over some things that you can do to counteract this punishing inflation. The price of everything has gone up, but most notably gas and food. Unfortunately, they are two of the things we rely upon the most. Obviously, we can’t stop buying them so what’s a consumer to do? Let’s start with those high prices at the gas pump. The only thing to be done for that is to use less of it. Try to eliminate unnecessary driving. Much of the driving we do each week can be drastically cut down or eliminated altogether. Remember the Covid shutdown? You were staying home all the time, and what happened to your gas spending budget? I’m not saying to go back to that drastic situation but do try to be more conscious of discretionary driving. Consolidate your errands as much as possible. Try not to be nipping out for a quart of milk one day, and a loaf of bread the next. Buy all your groceries at once for the week (even for two weeks). Some diehards can do it for a whole month. Do all your errands together on one day, mapping out your path for the least driving possible. Carpool if you can. Is there someone with whom you can share driving into work? Try to double up or more with people whenever you are going somewhere in the car. Maybe you can turn some of your chores into social events, traveling to the grocery store with a neighbor or friend. This might be a good time start that walking regime you keep meaning to get around to. Are there some places on your weekly driving list that are actually within walking (or maybe biking) distance? Use this as an opportunity to better your health and get into shape while also saving on your gas budget. And, of course, stay home when you can. You got used to that during the pandemic, right? Break out the old board games, puzzles and books and enjoy some of that domestic bliss you came to know and appreciate during the shutdown. Finally, make sure to keep your car in top condition, and especially to have your tires inflated to the correct PSI. Talk to your mechanic about other maintenance you can do that might improve your gas mileage. Luckily, there are many things you can do to lower your food bill as well. You can start with how you approach food buying in the first place. What you should not be doing is planning your meals and then shopping for the ingredients. To save money on your food bill, you should be doing exactly the opposite. The most frugal approach to food shopping is to buy what’s on sale. Every supermarket advertises a few “loss leaders” in its circular to get you in the door. Buy these sale items. Stock up on them if they are nonperishable. Also, keep your pantry well stocked with cheap meal ingredients, such as pasta, rice, barley or other grains, oatmeal, beans, lentils, split peas, canned tomatoes and so on. Keep your freezer stocked with frozen veggies and fruits (bought when on sale). I buy them or grow my own and freeze them during the summer months when they are in season. But you can still buy them cheaply throughout the year, especially when there is a sale or in bulk size. If you eat meat, buy it when it is on sale, and then either freeze it or make your meal out of it and freeze the whole meal or a portion of it to eat another time. Also, stick to more reasonably priced selections, like chicken or ground beef. The less meat you can get by with, the better off you will be when it comes to food costs (not to mention your health!). This same concept goes for dairy products as well, another costly part of your food budget. Our family saved a lot of money on our food budget when we switched to a vegan lifestyle! When you approach food shopping this way, you will always have the fixings for an affordable and healthy meal at home, and you will notice an immediate drop in your weekly grocery bill. And hopefully, this will keep you from traveling to restaurants (wasting gas as well) or from picking up a quick (but expensive) take-out meal on the way home. There are three more items that you should drop from your grocery list if you are trying to save at the register: processed foods, prepared meals, and beverages. Try to avoid those ready-made meals and basically anything that comes in a package with a big list of (often unpronounceable) ingredients. As for beverages, the fewer you can buy of these the better too. Drink water ! (from the tap). Sugary drinks are expensive and not good for your waistline or your teeth anyway. This would be the perfect time to try and wean your family off of them if you can. And try to reduce the amount that you buy and drink. This includes “100% fruit juice drinks” (just as unhealthy, unfortunately, and even more expensive). And do I even have to mention those expensive coffee drinks? Make your own at home. If you are ready to dive deeper into frugal grocery shopping, I invite you to read my comprehensive guide: Money Saving Grocery Tips From Your Auntie Victoria None of this is rocket science, of course. It’s just frugality. It’s the way people used to live “back in the day”. It worked back then, and it can work for you through these expensive times too. Give it a try. You might like it! You may even decide to adopt this way of life permanently. Why live more expensively than you have to, right? I love this frugal life and I can’t help but spouting off its virtues to anyone and everyone who will listen. I hope you will come to like it as much as I do! A long, long time ago, after the birth of her third child, Victoria made the life-changing decision to leave the work world behind and devote herself to being a full-time mom and homemaker. Along with her new title of Domestic Engineer, she took on the role of the Chief Home Economist for the family. At first, it was scary to try to live on less than half their income, but Victoria found that she not only rose to the challenge but thrived in the enjoyment of learning to live their best life with limited resources. She embraced this new frugal lifestyle of the at-home-mom and went on to add a fourth child to the mix. And their family was complete. Along the way she acquired a great deal of wisdom in how to not only avoid debt, but pay off mortgages early, buy cars for cash, travel on a shoe-string budget, and send kids to college with no student loans, all while also saving a tidy nest egg for retirement. She currently educates others in these skills through her business Bright Future. Now living the life of a modern homesteader in the Hudson Valley, New York, Victoria has added gardening to her list of skill sets as she grows many of her own vegetables to supplement her family’s primarily vegan diet. And she has come to realize that this waste-not, want-not, carbon-friendly, sustainable life she is living is not only benefiting her own family but also our Mother Earth, and that each of us has the obligation to live a responsibly sustainable life not only for ourselves, but for the greater good of our community, and our planet. We can all do this one household and backyard at a time. We are the world! And it all begins right at home. Victoria can be reached at brightfuture2budget4@gmail.com

By Andy Borowitz April 1, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Adding his voice to the movement to legalize cannabis at the federal level, Dr. Anthony Fauci testified that marijuana could be helpful to people who have to listen to Senator Ted Cruz speak. “Medically speaking, there is no way to completely alleviate the pain of hearing Ted Cruz’s voice,” Fauci told the Senate. “But, anecdotally, I can tell you that marijuana helps.” Fauci said that a septuagenarian man who had previously suffered while listening to Cruz noted “marked improvement” when he ingested marijuana prior to another encounter. “The results were dramatic,” he said. “His feelings of anger, depression, and despair were all greatly reduced.” “Sitting here before you today, I can tell you that people are breaking the law in order to survive experiencing Ted Cruz,” he said. “They should be allowed to come out of the shadows.”

By Emmy Serviss / Boston That hot dog costume was the best $10 I've ever spent on the Chewy website In 2009, I went to go “look at some kittens.” My (ex) boyfriend scoffed at me, because no one goes to just “look” at kittens. I scoffed back at him, because I was very capable of going to look at kittens without taking one home, thankyouverymuch. He was right, of course. A few weeks later, I took home Pippin and Theo, and they’ve been the one constant thing in my life for the last 13 years. Pippin (left) and Theo (right) on their first day at home with me in 2009 We had plenty of pets during my childhood, with varying success. My brother and I never quite got the hang of caring for hamsters (RIP to Baby, Spot, Peachy and Nosey), but we did have better luck with dogs. (Maxie and Maggie will always have a place in my heart) However, my childhood experiences with cats were a bit more tumultuous. Harry (a luxurious Maine coon) and Abbie Hoffman (a striking Japanese bobtail) were beautiful cats, but undeniable assholes. The only memories I have of Harry, are of him scratching and/or biting me. A few years after Harry’s departure (I’m not actually sure if he passed away or ran away) we brought home Abbie. He joined the family a very skittish kitten and eventually became a basement-dwelling gremlin. I do have some memories of cuddling and petting Abbie, but I also have very distinct memories of him BITING MY CHIN WITH NO WARNING. After I graduated from college and moved to the west coast in 2004, I lived in Los Angeles for four years and Portland, Ore. for two years before realizing that I was now an adult, and I could adopt a pet by myself. This brings us back to 2009, when I naively thought I could “look” at kittens without falling in love immediately. I had seen a post in a local community group on LiveJournal (remember that?!) about how a woman (Teresa) had found a litter of kittens in her backyard and was trying to find them homes. I reached out to her and we arranged a day for me to come by for a visit. When my ex and I pulled up to her house, Teresa was sitting on the front stoop holding a tiny little gray ball of fur. I didn’t know it yet, but that was Pippin. She brought us to the house and into a room that had been converted to a kitten playpen. Pippin was the only all-gray cat, and the rest of the litter were either black or a mixture of gray and white. I had never adopted pets by myself before, so I didn’t exactly know what the protocol was. I held a couple of the kittens and they were very cute, but I didn’t know how to pick. Then I picked up Theo. He scampered up my shoulder and nestled into my hair and hid there. And that was that. I smiled at Teresa and said, “So I guess this one is coming with me.” After interacting with the rest of the kittens, Pippin was definitely the most playful, so I picked him as well. I knew that if I was going to adopt a kitten, I wanted two kittens. I have a theory that a cat has a higher likelihood of becoming an asshole if it doesn’t have a buddy. (Harry and Abbie are my supporting evidence) Theo nestled in the author’s hair, while Pippin played with string on the floor A week later, I went back to pick up my new babies, and brought them home. Pippin was always Pippin. As an avid Lord of the Rings fan, I knew that this little ball of energy was going to be the lovable, mischievous rascal of the pair. But it wasn’t as easy finding Theo’s name. My ex had many unhelpful suggestions. ''Call him Merry!" "Just because Pippin is Pippin, doesn’t make this one Merry. That’s not him." "Okay, then Gollum." “What? NO."“Gandalf?" “Stop naming Lord of the Rings characters.” It took a while to find his name. Ironically, I found his name due to the fact that I’m a huge musical theater fan, and every time I told someone that I had named the gray kitten Pippin, they IMMEDIATELY assumed it was because of Pippin the musical. A very fair assumption, but incorrect. Pippin allowed a selfie with the author on Day 3, while Theo waited until Day 37 After the third or fourth time someone made this mistake, I decided to look at the cast of characters, on a whim. I scrolled past The Leading Player, Charles, Lewis, Fastrada, Berthe, Catherine and then at the bottom of the list…Theo. And there he was. He was Theo. He had always been Theo. It always makes me smile when I get to explain to someone that I named Pippin from Lord of the Rings, but I named Theo from Pippin. These two fluffbutts (one of their many nicknames) have been with me through so much over the last 13 years. Three states, one cross-country flight, six apartments, seven human roommates, 10 furry roommates, two career changes and four boyfriends. The move to Boston was disorienting at first, but eventually we learned to love that Dirty Water If Pippin and Theo were my human children,, Pippin would be my eye-rolling tween who is too cool to hang out with his mom, while Theo would be my doting kindergartener who always needs mom’s attention. Pippin will yell (meow) at me from across the apartment in a loud whiny voice, and yet when I try to go over to pet him, he walks away. And then when I go back to minding my business, he gets offended. Theo will quietly enter a room and politely stand on his back legs to paw gently at me, and then let out a little chirp. Theo will cuddle with me all day every day, and doesn’t mind if Pippin joins in. Pippin will only cuddle with me if we are alone, and he has my undivided attention. Theo loves to burrow under the covers. Pippin drools when he’s happy. Theo is my lovebug. Pippin is my grumpy old man. Boundaries? What are those? Through all the ups and downs, it was the three of us for 12 solid years. And then last summer, we had an unexpected addition to our family. Well…two additions. My friend Scott was fostering kittens in New Jersey, and I jokingly said I would adopt them, since they were named Chucky and Annabelle, and I’m a HUGE horror movie fan. Scott said they would be willing to let someone from out of state adopt the kittens, and I said I would check with my roommate and landlord. Full disclosure. I 100% expected either my roommate or my landlord to politely decline my request to have four cats in the apartment. To my absolutely surprise, they both gave their approval. When I was talking with Scott about logistics for picking up the kittens in Jersey (hypothetically, of course), I realized that the day I would be bringing them home would be July 10th 2021. July 10th 2009 was the day that I brought Pippin and Theo home. All four of my cats have the same Gotcha Day, 12 years apart. I couldn’t deny that it was fate that these horror kittens were always meant to be mine. And even though I changed Chucky’s name to August, he’s still a horror kitten at heart. And now here we are. My roommate moved into a place of her own, and now it’s just me and my feline family. I joke that because I broke up with my ex during quarantine, I decided to lean real hard into the crazy cat lady trope. But honestly? Being a cat lady is pretty great! The cats don’t make me watch bad action movies, or take hour long baths every day, or criticize my matzoh ball soup. (Seriously, how very dare you criticize my matzoh ball soup?) And yes, the kittens are still in kitten mode, so there have been more annoying shenanigans than usual since the summer. But there was a time where the mischief kitten running around causing mayhem was Pippin, not August. So I know that there will be a time when I’ll miss these annoying antics. August and Annabelle will turn one-year-old on April 9th, and Pippin and Theo will be 13 on May 15th. I know that Pippin and Theo are now considered “senior cats,” but I’ve informed them that they’re never ever allowed to leave me. I feel confident that they’ll keep up their end of the bargain. At least for meow. Emmy Serviss is a Boston-based writer, actor and video editor. Once it is safe to return to live theater, you can find her performing with ComedySportz Boston and the sketch group SUZZY. When not on the stage, Emmy enjoys indulging in her new pandemic hobbies, laughing way too loudly and counting the days until Halloween.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. I have never liked Arnold Schwarzenegger. To me, he has always seemed smug, conceited, and arrogant, especially for someone who started out as a bodybuilder and made his Hollywood millions by playing emotionless, robot-like characters like the Terminator—the only roles that he, with his heavy Austrian accent and wooden delivery, could seem to handle. (Granted, he was a top bodybuilder, winning the Mr. Universe title for weightlifting at age 20. And I’ll admit it. I did enjoy Conan the Barbarian, one of those movies so bad that it was good.) Then there were Schwarzenegger’s conservative politics. He managed to parlay his marriage to Maria Shriver, niece of Democratic President John F. Kennedy, along with his tough-guy action-star fame, to become the Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011. (Schwarzenegger and Shriver separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce in 2021.) There was even talk on the right (fanned by Schwarzenegger himself) in 2004 of attempting to change the Constitution’s requirement that presidents be born within the United States, specifically in order to permit Schwarzenegger–born in Austria and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1983 while retaining his Austrian citizenship–to run for president. And the fact that his father was a Nazi during World War II made me suspect Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bona fides. True. there was previously a hint of his anti-fascist/anti-authoritarian views in 2017 when, in response to the march in Charlottesville by Nazis and white supremacists, Schwarzenegger told them in a video, “Your heroes are losers.," and expressed the belief that "all human beings have equal value." However, Arnold then held up a little Trump bobblehead as he offered an example of what he, as president, would have said instead—suggesting some political self-aggrandizement mixed in with the nobility of that statement. But now I find, to my surprise, that I am forced to like Arnold more despite myself. My about-face has been caused by the nine-minute video he posted on Twitter and the Telegram channels on March 17. The video has been a techno-political triumph. Because of Schwarzenegger’s huge popularity in Russia, it immediately went viral, garnering millions of views on both Twitter and Telegram. The Telegram social media app, still accessible in Russia, is one of the few ways to transmit independent news that has not been blocked. In the video, the actor speaks directly to the Russian people, trying to cut through Putin’s information blockade to tell them the truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Noting his longtime sense of friendship to the Russian people, Schwarzenegger says, "I’m speaking to you today because there are things that are going on in the world that are being kept from you, terrible things that you should know about…Ukraine did not start this war, neither did nationalists or Nazis…This is not the Russian people’s war." He goes on to inform viewers of the details of the war and its effect on civilians and soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian. Movingly, Schwarzenegger speaks of his Nazi father’s actions in World War II, and the effect it had on the rest of his father’s life, saying he did not want this fate for the Russians: [My father] was injured at Leningrad and the Nazi army he was part of did vicious harm to the great city and to its brave people…When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped up on the lies of his government…When he left Leningrad, he was broken–physically and mentally. He lived the rest of his life in pain. Pain from a broken back, pain from the shrapnel that always reminded him of those terrible years. And pain from the guilt that he felt. To the Russian soldiers listening to this broadcast, you already know much of the truth that I’ve been speaking. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. I don’t want you to be broken like my father. He also directly addresses Vladimir Putin: “To President Putin, I say: You started this war. You are leading this war. You can stop this war.” Finally, Schwarzenegger addresses the Russians protesting the war, those being beaten and jailed, telling them: “You are my new heroes.” Arnold’s very personal, heartfelt appeal is honest and touching. And that the video’s details have been fact-checked by Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council Ukraine expert whose integrity as concerns Ukraine and Russia is unimpeachable, has added extra weight to Arnold’s words. Vindman knows a thing or two about making political statements: he sacrificed his military career by testifying at Trump’s first impeachment trial, exposing Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Ukraine into maunfacturing an investigation of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Furthermore, according to USA Today, Putin follows only 22 people on his official English-language Twitter account and Schwarzenegger is one of them. So, it is more than likely that Putin saw the video, and one cannot imagine that the strongman was pleased. The Russian propaganda machine has, predictably, been busy counterattacking. Russian state TV host Vadim Gigin responded by calling Schwarzenegger’s face “the cover page of American imperialism and colonialism,” and querulously complained “He, in California, will tell us, who live here…the truth?! That is their approach towards us.” In the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russian powerlifting champion Maryana Naumova, accused Schwarzenegger of “living in an alternative, imaginary reality.” Repeating Putin’s accusation of Ukrainian Nazism, she wrote: “The fact that Mr. Zelensky, as you say, is a Jew, did not help them. Nazism has no nationality; Nazism is not based on the word ‘German.’ And Russophobia is no better than anti-Semitism.” The Daily Beast reported that Zakhar Prilepin, a famous Russian writer who is wanted by Ukraine’s security service on charges of “taking part in the activity of a terrorist organization,” wrote on his Telegram channel, “This Austrian, the son of his father, who served in the SS and was wounded near Leningrad, is trying to act as the good cop.” It is difficult to know how the Russians who only see state TV will react to these counterattacks, but, to me, they seem to have the strength of weak tea, especially when weighed against Schwarzenegger’s popularity and the sincerity of his video. I would second a statement byAndrei Soldatov, a London-based Russian investigative journalist. According to USA Today, Soldatov said, “you've got pro-Kremlin people attacking Schwarzenegger, and it didn't go well.” He added, “You can’t attack Schwarzenegger. It's a bad idea.” With any luck, this will not be the last time we’ll hear from Arnold on this issue. After all, as the celluloid strongman famously promised in The Terminator, “I’ll be back.” Personally, I hope he will. At this moment, I am not inclined to dislike Arnold. If I ran into him, I would offer to buy him a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. Oh, hell. I’d spring for an entire dinner! 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 Amy Lennard Goehner / Hudson, N.Y. Cue drumroll… And the winner of The Insider’s Second Annual Oscar Competition is . . . Paul Fishbein of, where else? Los Angeles! Paul correctly picked eight of ten award winners, missing only original screenplay, Belfast, and film editing, Dune. (He chose Licorice Pizza and The Power of the Dog, respectively). Those eight correct picks plus a tie-breaking answer predicting the length of the Best Picture acceptance speech, won him a $100 Amazon gift card. Paul, a native Philadelphian, is a producer of TV and film documentaries, most recently the docs Time Warp, about the greatest cult films of all time, and Skin, a history of nudity in the movies, currently on Hulu. He’s also the co-founder of Adult Video News (AVN), the trade publication for the adult home video industry, and the AVN Awards. “I’m a film buff, first and foremost,” said Paul. And during the pandemic, he says he watched more films than at any time in his life. “Everything that was normally offered to me to go see in a theater was available online, things like the New York Film Festival, Tribeca, even Sundance. Plus being home, you watch more movies. I really ramped it up,” he says. Paul attended Temple University in Philadelphia. As a journalism student, he started an independent college magazine called In Print. At the time, he started working at nearby Movies Unlimited, back then the biggest video store in the country. It was there that he and his friend and future business partner, Irv Slifkin, got the idea for AVN. (Coincidentally, Irv, also a subscriber to The Insider, hold's the title of our First Annual Oscar Competition Winner!) As for the Oscars, Paul applauded CODA nabbing Best Picture, but admits he was also rooting for the Netflix movie, The Power of the Dog. “I want Netflix to stay engaged because they're making really great movies that I don't think any other studio would make,” says Paul. “They take risks and do big stuff, like The Irishman from Martin Scorsese and Marriage Story from Noah Baumbach a couple of years ago.” Paul was surprised his favorite film from last year and its director wasn’t even nominated: Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers. And Paul’s favorite all-time film? Too tough to narrow down. Top five? No hesitation: The Producers (the original), Annie Hall, Singin’ in the Rain, Cinema Paradiso and Casablanca. As for picking winners, Paul’s shared his strategy: “You just get a sense as to what people are looking at,” he says. “You see CODA won the Screen Actors Guild and you know that a lot of those people are also Academy voters. And plus, it's a feel good film and Power of the Dog is a little more difficult. You draw from what you read and what people are going for -- and you guess!” Having produced awards shows in the past, Paul calls himself “an awards show guy,” who particularly savors those “great moments that are either flubs or mistakes or just spontaneous things.” A favorite of his was the 2017 Oscars show when La La Land was incorrectly announced for Best Picture -----instead of Moonlight. How about this year’s “spontaneous thing” when Will Smith clocked Chris Rock after he made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith? “The Academy's ratings are in the toilet. And they've got all kinds of issues and all kinds of problems,” says Paul. “But at least people are talking about the show. That's not what the Academy wants to talk about, but at least they’re in the conversation.” Looking ahead to films in the making that Paul is anxious to see, topping the list is Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Scorsese, whom Paul considers the greatest living American filmmaker. But the film that Paul is most excited about is Video Nation: the first feature film screenplay that he’s written. The script is complete, it only awaits funding and production. Paul shares a sneak preview: “It’s an autobiographical coming-of-age comedy about a couple of people out of college who want to go to Hollywood and work in the mainstream film industry and they get waylaid into the newly emerging adult video industry. It takes place in the early ‘80s, when home video was just becoming a thing, VCRs and all that. But it's more a workplace comedy than a story about the porn industry. The adult industry, with its outsized cast of characters, provides the backdrop.” Paul describes the main character, er, himself at 22, as totally lacking self-esteem, a complete nerd who loved movies and worked at a video store. “But he learns about life and love as he grows this unique business,” he says. In reflecting on this trajectory his career took, Paul says, “I have a weird past, being a co-creator of the adult equivalent of Variety and then doing an awards show. Then I transitioned now to making more mainstream documentaries. So I guess I have an unusual kind of background.” And how does Paul feel about adding the accomplishment The Insider’s Second Annual Oscar Winner to his resume? “I’ve never won anything so I’m very excited!” says Paul enthusiastically. I’m a third-generation Brooklynite (when Brooklyn was a place to come from, not go to) but grew up in Newton, Mass. I spent most of my career at Time Inc. as deputy chief of reporters at Sports Illustrated, senior editor at Sports Illustrated Kids, and senior arts reporter at Time. I wrote a lot about autism for Time, as my oldest son has autism. I currently freelance for AARP's Livable Communities. I’m in my element ghostwriting online dating profiles or shooting pool and drinking a vodka martini — while listening to Ella, Dinah or Sarah.

By Andy Borowitz March 30, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling her decision to vote for the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson “totally unacceptable,” Senate Republicans are punishing Susan Collins by forcing her to sit next to Rand Paul. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Collins’s sentence from the well of the Senate, declaring, “By sitting next to Rand Paul, Susan Collins is paying the ultimate price.” After a few days and weeks of hearing Rand natter on in that grating way of his, maybe she’ll start to think about what she has done and whether it was truly worth it,” he said. Speaking to reporters, Collins appeared shaken by the Republican leadership’s decision to seat her next to the Kentucky senator. “Clearly, this is going to be awful, but I’m trying to look on the bright side,” she said. “At least I’m not sitting next to Josh Hawley.”