By Naomi Serviss / New York City My good friend Nona has been nudging me to post on Cheltenham High School Class of 1971’s Facebook page. She’d like me to pen a reflective, recollected summation of my life and career so other classmates could catch up. That is, if they remember me at all. Nona and I have been buds for decades, having met in second grade. She’s extremely task-oriented and knows how to make the wheels turn on any project she gets into. Except in this case, I’d prefer not to, as Bartleby, the Scrivener famously said in Melville’s book of the same name. A three-day celebration had been planned for last month. Nona and classmate Neil worked doggedly to land a jazzy, cool place to gather for a long Philadelphia weekend. Covid-19 put the kibosh on good intentions. The reunion is now scheduled for next October in an equally swell venue. Nona’s been sweetly requesting folks to recap a life in 400 words. Not really my thing. Nevertheless, she persisted. I hate disappointing my loyal buddy. Sidebar: I really don’t belong in that group, since Cheltenham was not technically where I spent senior year. For 12th grade, I attended Philadelphia’s Parkway Program, the nation’s first “school without walls.” That non-structured “school” may have been without a main edifice, but there was a method to the madness of unleashing self-motivated kids onto the streets of Philadelphia. No need for the particulars. Cheltenham High School was an overachiever’s dream/nightmare. So many electives! The school had everything: excellent teachers (albeit a tad conservative); a television studio, planetarium and indoor swimming pool were icing. Students overdosed on competition, driven by grade-focused teachers. Before Parkway, I went to an inner-city high school that was as awful as the ones on television shows. I was randomly punched in the head. And devastated by a friend’s heroin overdose. Why did I go to dangerous Olney High for 11th grade? Because my mother moved us from Cheltenham’s privileged school district into Philadelphia’s jurisdiction. When I won the Parkway lottery to attend senior year, I felt like a million bucks. But for all other grades, from kindergarten through 10th, I was a legit Elkins Park resident. So I do have every right to attend the 50th, if I am so inclined. At the height of the pandemic, Nona played matchmaker and suggested reconnecting with my school pal Jane. It was a suggestion I couldn’t refuse. That led to a biweekly CHS Zoom group invite. We share grievances, regrets then move on to current events and the like. Lately we’ve been dishing on our collective high-school romances or lack thereof. I’m grateful to Nona, who is a powerful instigator, mover and shaker. And a wonderful forever friend confidante. If she wants a post from me, so be it. But I’d rather not detail achievements and career moves. The thought of writing about them bores me to tears. Why should I subject fellow alumni to my tedious employment history? I’d much rather reminisce about being a mother, of which I’m most proud. Some of my playgroup’s moms bemoaned side-tracked careers. It was the ‘80s, when women felt conflicted about pausing a career to raise kids. I wasn’t conflicted. Motherhood gave me the opportunity to do the opposite of how I was raised. And that’s virtually how my kids were parented. They turned out pretty, pretty good. As for my attending the rescheduled reunion, If all goes well, I’ll be there. It would be outstanding to see high school Zoom-mates in the flesh. And should a fellow alum need or want details of my career path, just ask Nona. 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

By Andrea Sachs This story originally ran in nu-detroit.com Move over, Netflix. Don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty of perfectly good stuff to stream out there. But if you come to my place, you’ll find MSNBC blaring on my TV. After 30 years as a reporter, old habits die hard. And why would anyone choose the flimsy fictions of Hollywood over the real-life drama of Washington and its cast of characters, including duplicitous Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema the cypher and drecky Steve Bannon? Which is why the story of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was in heavy rotation chez Sachs last month. There she was, in front of Congress, unspooling hour after hour the bad deeds of Mark Zuckerberg, who Grandma Esther would have spotted a mile away as a gonif. In 2002, while I was working at Time magazine, three women jointly selected as the Persons of the Year were dubbed The Whistleblowers. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten their names already — Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron. Ah, fame is fleeting.) Like Haugen, these women had spilled the beans. At the time, the choice struck me as kinda gimmicky, but looking back a couple of decades in the rear-view mirror, it now seems prescient. Which is why, on October 7 at 6:50 pm, I found myself musing about the virtues of female whistleblowing. (Being able to keep track of dates and times is critical for would-be whistleblowers.) I was waiting for my good friend and fellow journo Evy to arrive for dinner. I never suspected that our meal would mark the nanosecond when I, too, would attain whistleblower status. The evening began as a rendezvous with indigestion. The plan was for me to meet Evy at Maison de Faux Cuisine (name changed to protect the busboys) on West 73rd Street, in the heart of the Upper West Side. I got there ten minutes early, in hopes of snaring a good outside table, since the pandemic has driven hordes of local diners en plein air. A dark-haired waiter brusquely took me to the least desirable table in Manhattan. I don’t mean to sound like a kvetch, but the corner of the table had a big chunk missing, and the view was of two wooden sawhorses no one had bothered to drag away after some recent construction. The setting had all of the charm of the Paris city dump. The waiter who had seated me in this junkheap looked more like a scowling ruffian than an employee in a fine establishment. I’ll admit it — I was scared of him. I summoned up an embarrassingly timid voice and squeaked, “I don’t think my friend Evy will want to sit at this table.” He dismissively mumbled something about the fact that it was the only table available. I spotted several empty tables with stylish bar stools at unchipped tables. What about those? I motioned. “You wouldn’t want to sit there,would you?” he replied. You’re damn right I would. At that moment, the situation was thrown into sharp relief. While I am no nonagenarian, I’m not a coed either. (OPHS, Class of 1970 — do the math.) Evy in absentia and I were getting the treatment that two women alone often get in restaurants once they no longer get carded. Lousier tables, lousier service. Which is plenty ironic, because I am actually quite a good tipper. My experience in high school waiting tables at Blazo’s, a decidedly non-franco eatery in Oak Park, had left me with a permanent sense of sisterhood with servers. I got a little huffier, determined to assert our right to sit with the rest of the human race during this meal. The waiter got huffier, too — who was this antiquated bitch to be pushing him around? Glowering, he moved me to one of the nicer high tables, just as Evy rounded the corner. Then he dropped only one menu and scooted. Of course, I told Evy the story when we were sharing our lone menu, and she got the situation immediately. Evy’s no dummy — she’s been an editor at the best publications in the city. Any woman who’s survived those snake pits knows the score. Prince Charmless came back to our table at this point. He clearly hated me, and I wasn’t the president of his fan club either. But there was work to be done — taking our orders and getting us the hell out of there. Alas, sitting on my hard-won tall chair, the waiter was a few inches away from my nose and maskless when he started to take my order. The last I heard, it was still the pandemic. I wasn’t going to let some bogus garçon spit in my direction. I politely asked him to put on his mask. He reared back. “No. I don’t have to. I’m vaccinated.” I was genuinely stunned, as was Evy. In addition to working outside, our waiter was running back and forth into the restaurant and the kitchen. Give me a break — I’ve eaten at plenty of outside restaurants, and the wait staff has invariably been masked. Besides, it was just plain rude, a violation of the server code of servile serviceship I had learned back at Blazo’s. You want a tip, bub? Put on your damn mask, I fumed silently. With a sour expression on his still-uncovered face, he headed towards the kitchen to get our escargot. (Escargot in both price and pace, but of course not actual snails. The same pretentious dishes served at every joint on the UWS.) Evy thought that we should stiff the waiter to pay him back for his impudence. But I thought that would play right into his narrative about female diners being cheap, so I talked her out of it. After eating our meals, when we paid the bill — trop cher! — we gave him a healthy tip. But on the merchant’s copy of the charge receipt, I wrote on the back in big letters for his boss’ benefit as well as his own: NEXT TIME, WEAR A MASK. IT’S THE LAW. Satisfied that I’d paid the creep back for his incivility, I ran inside the restaurant to use les toilettes des dames before we left. And there, in flagranti, was the scene of the crime. None of the servers, or even the maître d’ at the door, was wearing a mask! Maybe the waiter outside had a colorable claim to be bare-faced, but this was beyond the pale. J’accuse! I tried not to breathe in as I headed for the door. As Evy and I walked away from the restaurant, full of counterfeit French cookery, we held our heads high. We had been dissed but had risen to the occasion. We made enthusiastic plans never to eat there again soon and said good night. When I got back to my castle on a cloud, I was still furious with that little twerp and his crappy bistro. I wasn’t done yet. What else could I do to whip that germy place into Covid compliance? With a sense of destiny at my back, I dialed 311, New York City's main source of government information and non-emergency services. I understood down to my toes how Frances Haugen felt when she decided to reveal the treacheries of Facebook to the world. Mirabile dictu! There was a real human being on the other end of the line. The 311-operator seemed genuinely interested in my sighting and took down the particulars of my story. Like Haugen and my sister whistleblowers before me, I served up each delicious detail with gusto. I would close down Maison Monstrous with my testimony! I imagined Mark Zuckerberg, sitting in the kitchen of the restaurant and cowering when he heard the news that his goose was cooked. When I was finished unspooling, the operator asked, “Do you want to give your name? It’s not required.” I barely hesitated. Of course! How would MSNBC know how to find me otherwise? I was Case No. 31107938694, a number that clearly indicated a surfeit of diner grievances throughout the city. No matter — I had entered whistleblower history. My 311-savior said goodbye and told me, “The proper agency will go out and check the situation tomorrow.” Liberté, égalité, fraternité! I would like to tell you that they perp-walked our waiter down Broadway the next day to loud public denunciations. The denouement, alas, was less dramatic than that. When I called 311 two days later to find out what had happened to Case No. 31107938694, a different person answered the phone. After looking up the case, she told me in a pleasant but perfunctory way, “Thank you for helping keep New York City safe from Covid-19. Thanks for being a good citizen.” Merde! I would never know the end of the story. Of course, I could walk into the restaurant and see whether they had been forced to wear masks, if not rounded up and sent to the guillotine, but I might run into my adversary sporting a carving knife. I decided to let it go. I’ll admit it — getting the Big Apple equivalent of a Girl Scout badge was a letdown. My Time magazine cover was nowhere in sight. But as God is my witness, this is only the beginning of my whistleblowing. Next time, I am going to call the Bureau of Dissed Distaff Diners immediately to report any instance of table inequity. No more being seated next to the broom closet for this gal. Ladies who lunch, unite! We have nothing to fear except the possibility of the evil eye from some surly server or all-seeing eye of Monsieur Meta Zuckerberg. Fin. Andrea Sachs is the founder and editor of The Insider, a weekly online publication. She grew up in Oak Park and currently lives in Manhattan.

November 15, 2021 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow suffered the same lack of trust between developing and developed countries that has burdened global climate negotiations for almost three decades. Financing is at the heart of the rupture, and the time has come for a new approach. NEW YORK – The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) fell far short of what is needed for a safe planet, owing mainly to the same lack of trust that has burdened global climate negotiations for almost three decades. Developing countries regard climate change as a crisis caused largely by the rich countries, which they also view as shirking their historical and ongoing responsibility for the crisis. Worried that they will be left paying the bills, many key developing countries, such as India, don’t much care to negotiate or strategize. They have a point – indeed, several points. The shoddy behavior of the United States over three decades is not lost on them. Despite the worthy pleas for action by President Joe Biden and Climate Envoy John Kerry, Biden has been unable to push the US Congress to adopt a clean-energy standard. Biden can complain all he wants about China, but after 29 years of congressional inaction since the Senate ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the rest of the world sees the truth: America’s broken and corrupt Congress remains in the pocket of Big Oil and Big Coal. Financing is at the heart of the geopolitical rupture on climate change. Developing countries are already reeling under countless pressures: the COVID-19 pandemic, weak domestic economies, increasingly frequent and severe climate-related disasters, the multiple disruptions of the digital age, US-China tensions, and high borrowing costs on international loans. They watch the rich countries borrow trillions of dollars on capital markets at near-zero interest rates, while they must pay 5-10%, if they can borrow at all. In short, they see their societies falling even further behind a few high-income countries. Against this background of high economic anxiety, developing countries see the rich countries refusing to discuss forthrightly the financing crisis developing countries face when it comes to climate-change mitigation and adaptation or other urgent needs. They see rich countries spending an extra $20 trillion or so on their own economies in response to COVID-19, but then failing to honor their promise – dating from COP15 in 2009 – to mobilize a meager $100 billion per year for climate action in developing countries. Of course, Biden’s reticence on climate financing for developing countries is understandable. He would be lambasted in the nationalistic US media if he called for more US help for the developing countries, and would gain nothing for it in Congress. With US global influence waning, America’s nationalists have turned even more aggressively against the rest of the world. “America Firsters” in Congress would block any new appropriations. Many governments in Europe are in roughly the same position, perched precariously between nationalist and internationalist parties. And with budget deficits in European countries generally high in the wake of COVID-19, many parliaments have little taste to do more – especially given that the European Union already devotes a far higher share of gross national income (roughly 0.5%) to official development assistance than does the US (just 0.17%). That leaves us stuck between the reality of a devastating global climate crisis and rich countries’ nationalist politics, with climate finance based on voluntary contributions by the rich. The result is the chronic deep under-financing of global public goods such as a safe climate, the Sustainable Development Goals, and COVID-19 vaccines. Leaders like Biden may plead with their legislatures to be responsible, but the legislators find it more politically expedient to rail against “undeserving” foreigners. The financial failures at COP26 are both tragic and absurd, going beyond the overarching failure to mobilize the promised $100 billion per year. Consider that the much-vaunted Climate Adaptation Fund, established to help developing countries to meet their adaptation needs, collected all of $356 million in pledges at COP26, or roughly five cents per person in the world’s developing countries. Financing for “losses and damages,” that is, to recover and rebuild from climate disasters, fared even worse, with rich countries agreeing only to hold a “dialogue” on the issue. This financial voluntarism needs to end. We need a global formula that assigns responsibility to each rich country. At least in that case, the global community would have a benchmark to demand action from laggard countries like the US. Here is one straightforward and workable approach. To help fund the clean-energy transition (mitigation) and climate resilience (adaptation) in developing countries, each high-income country would be levied $5 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Upper-middle-income countries would be levied $2.50 per ton. These CO2 levies would start as soon as possible and rise gradually, doubling in five years. Countries could easily pay such modest sums from the proceeds of carbon taxes and auctions of emissions permits, both of which will have much a higher price per ton of CO2 than the levy. High-income countries currently emit around 12 billion tons of CO2 per year, and upper-middle-income countries are emitting around 16 billion tons annually, so the carbon payments would add up to roughly $100 billion at the start, and double after five years. The funds would be directed to low-income and lower-middle-income countries, as well as to particular countries with special climate vulnerabilities (such as small-island states facing rising sea levels and more intense tropical cyclones). Suppose that half of the funds (initially $50 billion) are distributed as outright grants, and the rest are injected into the world’s multilateral development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, as new capital to back climate financing. The MDBs would use the new capital to raise funds in capital markets, leveraging the new $50 billion into perhaps $200 billion in green bonds, which they would on-lend to the developing countries for climate projects. In this way, the modest carbon levy would raise around $250 billion in new annual climate financing, and would double to around $500 billion after five years. To fund losses and damages, an additional levy would be applied, not to the current emissions but to the sum of past emissions, in order to align today’s losses and damages with the historical responsibility for today’s climate change. The US, for example, is responsible for around 20% of all CO2 emissions since 1850. If a new Global Losses and Damages Fund seeks to raise, say, $50 billion per year, the annual US share would be $10 billion. Agreeing on such revenue principles will of course not be easy, but it will be far better to struggle over a new rules-based system than to bet the planet’s future on voluntarism. COP26 showed definitively that asking national politicians to vote for voluntary funds for global public goods is a dead end. The rich-country politicians had a dozen years to get the promised climate financing in place, but they failed. A rules-based system, with fair and transparent burden sharing, is the way to secure the financing we need for planetary safety and fairness. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fixing-climate-finance-requires-global-rules-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-11 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 Naomi Serviss / New York City Broadway’s Tony Award-winning stunner, To Kill a Mockingbird, has returned to the Shubert Theatre, sounding a joyful noise. This newly crafted version is an Aaron Sorkin (of TV fame) iteration of Harper Lee’s seminal novel, set in dusty Maycomb, Ala., 1934. Many are familiar with this story of a southern lawyer doing his utmost to raise ethical, loving, children without a mother’s nurturing. A devoted caretaker has picked up the slack, and bickers with Atticus as though they were loving siblings. If this drama were an upcoming television event it would be dubbed Must-See TV! If you must choose one Broadway play choose “Mockingbird.” Don’t bother standing on line at TKTS, big waste of time. Go straight to the box office, maybe snag a ticket for that very day. Jeff Daniels is utterly phenomenal. The ensemble is one of the best you’ll see on the Great White Way these days. It’s worth the price of admission just to see Atticus engage in justifiable fisticuffs with an adversary! Who knew Broadway would stage a fight scene for Jeff Daniels, our Everyman? Aaron Sorkin knew. Jeff Daniels leaves January 2, 2022. Greg Kinnear is stepping in after. “Mockingbird” is as much a crowd-pleaser, with as much staying power, as Hamilton. locals and tourists alike will flock to this show. Locals have been thrilled to be in this room when Mockingbird happens. Being up close and personal with one of the most versatile actors ever is a thrill for the audience. Even for jaded critics who’ve interviewed Marian Seldes and Blair Brown in their dressing rooms. Not on the same day. Jeff Daniels embodies the spirit intended by author Harper Lee. He practically channels the southern lawyer in temperament, inflection and small, world-weary gestures. This is an American story about bigotry and lynch mob mentality. It’s also much more. The post-Depression Deep South was a stew of impoverished ignorance and racism. Deftly folded in is childhood innocence, unlikely friendships and bitter truths. A history lesson writ large and horrifying. But ultimately, filled with hope. Like many, I was introduced to the Finch family in school. I strongly identified with the story’s narrator, Scout Finch. This overalled moppet was everything I aspired to be. Bold, confident, stubborn and didn’t fuss over a scraped knee or mussed-up hair. Scout asked a lot of questions. Her creative imagination soared. She had a loving father and brother who looked after her. The well-loved film version of Mockingbird stars the venerable Gregory Peck as an earnest, bespectacled country lawyer working on the right side of justice. He is steadfast and honorable, passionate about his children’s physical and emotional well-being. And kind to his neighbors who can’t always pay bills with cash. Problem is, it’s on celluloid, stuck in the past, the same with each rewatching. Fans of Harper Lee will not be disappointed by the live version. No performance is exactly the same. The thrill of live theater is to be celebrated! Masks and all! Jeff Daniels, who just wrapped Showtime’s new drama, American Rust is as popular as Tom Hanks, another beloved American actor. Both seem personable and fun to chill with. Daniels brings an earthy weariness to the staged role. While hopeful the justice system will uncover truth and lies, he braces for disappointment. The audience holds its collective breath a few times during this powerful tragedy, laced with humor and affection. One of my favorite words to say out loud came from this drama: chiffarobe, a combo of wardrobe and chest of drawers. Mockingbird grips you in the solar plexus from the get-go when Scout Finch (a remarkable Tony-winning Celia Kennan-Bolger) introduces the audience to the famous trial’s aftermath. Then the story trips back and forth in time, with cast members moving the set around to depict the Finch’s porch, the courtroom and the county jailhouse. The set is as versatile as Daniels. You may know bits and pieces of the story already. The nitty gritty: Tom Robinson (Michael Braugher’s Broadway debut) a poor, black southerner accused of rape, is tried for said crime. The evidence proves Robinson’s innocence. But this is 1934 Alabama, where racists too often win the battles, despite a poor country lawyer’s best intention. It’s not often you’ll have the opportunity to watch a masterful stage production like this in your lifetime! Take your kids—it will become a teachable moment on the ride home. The nearly three-hour performance fies by. When it reaches its stunning conclusion, the audience is stone quiet. After a few seconds the clapping begins, and the ovation lasts nearly four minutes. Postscript: Why do people feel the need to film every experience rather than enjoying it fully in the present? That’s the definition of irony. Dozens of people raised their iPhones and iPads to film the bowing actors. I’m sure that was not appreciated on stage. Why is that even tolerated, Shubert management? I know you’re not going to stop everyone from filming, but maybe the inconsiderate lout in front of me would have thought twice if an announcement had been made not to film the curtain calls, prior to the show. This has become a more-often-than-not happenstance. I hope people will come to their senses and simply Be Here Now. Lecture over. Next time I’ll cover hard candy and its dangers. Post-Postscript: Another reason why I appreciated Sorkin’s fingerprints: he left out the rabid dog scene! You know what happened then, right? Read the book to refresh your recall. I’m certainly not revisiting that devastating scene. I love dogs! Hooray! Good call, Aaron! Post-Post-Postscript I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a weary-looking Jeff Daniels with his pups as he took them to Central Park for a walk. He was walking his two gorgeous Australian shepherds. One of them is named Magglio. The other’s name is Scout. 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

By Madeline Barry / New York City As one of the most-celebrated guitarists in rock history, Eric Clapton is used to an abundance of applause, Clapton is the only three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Rolling Stone’s pick for the second greatest guitarist of all time, only behind the iconic Jimi Hendrix. At 76, Clapton could easily be resting on his laurels, after having played with some of the most influential bands of all time, including the 1960’s psychedelic supergroup Cream, the Yardbirds (which featured Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, no slouch himself), as well as the blues-rock band Derek and the Dominos. But instead, Clapton has become an avid anti-vaxxer, and the guitar legend’s vaccine bashing is damaging his standing in the music community.. Many fans and fellow artists have come forward to say that they are disappointed in the “Layla” guitarist, including fellow blues guitarist and five-time Grammy Award winner Robby Cray and New York City’s very own piano man Billy Joel. In an interview with Howard Stern, Joel told Stern he was shocked. “I didn’t know what his politics were, but it’s not pleasant.” Not everyone is anti-Clapton however. In the wake of the U.K. lockdown in December, 2020, Clapton teamed up with the notoriously temperamental Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison to release “Stand and Deliver,” a protest song that lamented the way the British government was handling the deadly virus. Proceeds for the song, which contained the lyrics below, went to Morrison’s “Van Morrison Rhythm and Blues Foundation,” a fund for professional musicians struggling to make money in the wake of the Covid shutdowns. Do you wanna be a free man Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna wear these chains Until you're lying in the grave? And while you may not have heard “Stand and Deliver” on many radio stations, Clapton and Morrison are still at it. In June, the pair released a duet titled “The Rebels” under the moniker Slow Hand and Van. In a similar vein, “The Rebels,” a bluesy song with slow, heavy guitar riffs, mourns the times. Where have all the rebels gone? Hiding behind their computer screens Where's the spirit, where is the soul? Where have all the rebels gone? It's not very rock and roll. Clapton claims his anti-vax stance is a result of a bad reaction to his AstraZeneca shot. In a letter to Italian architect and fellow anti-lockdown pal Robin Monotti, Clapton wrote ​​that after receiving his second AstraZeneca dose, the reactions were “disastrous” for two weeks. He said that his “hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless.” Clapton also wrote Monotti, who published the letter with Clapton’s permission, that he feared he would “never play again.” In Clapton’s latest single, “This Has Gotta Stop.” which came out on August 27, Clapton sings, and repeats that he “can’t take this BS any longer.” I can’t move my hands I break out in sweat I wanna cry Can’t take it anymore In his letter, Clapton went on to tell Monotti that he “should never have gone near the needle...but the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone.” In fact, Clapton’s health issues are not new. In 2013, he told The Washington Post that he had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy and that playing the guitar was “hard work.” Last month, Clapton donated money to the group Jam for Freedom, a U.K.-based band which claims they are “[spearheading] the pro-freedom revolution happening globally as a response to restrictions on our basic human rights to work, travel, and live.” According to Rolling Stone, Clapton donated to the band’s GoFundMe page to help pay their touring fees and even let the group borrow his van after theirs broke down. Campbell McLaughlin, the 27-year-old leader of the group, admitted he was shocked when he found out it was really Clapton who had donated the money. But the two men seem to share many of the same opinions: “[Clapton] said we’re essentially doing what he and his contemporaries in the Sixties did, which was embracing freedom, getting out of government control and societal control.’ The singer’s reputation has never been pristine. In 1976, Clapton went on a racist rant while performing a concert in Birmingham, England. He called on voters to elect Enoch Powell, the divisive politician known for his scathing 1968 speech “Rivers of Blood”, which served to criticize the large numbers of immigrants who were entering the United Kingdom as well as the then- newly passed “Race Relations Act”, a law that made it illegal for Britons to refuse employment, housing, or public services to people based on their ethnicity. Clapton also spewed his own racist vitriol. He told the crowd that they had to “stop Britain from becoming a black colony” and to “keep Britain white.” It wasn’t until 2018 at a Q & A in London that Clapton half-heartedly apologized for his behavior by blaming his hate-filled speech on his addiction to drugs and alcohol. “I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music.” Who knows? Perhaps a few years from now, Clapton, if he manages to duck Covid, will issue another semi-apology.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. I know some people might think what I’m about to say is hyperbole, but please hear me out. I am weighing my words carefully. I believe that the United States faces an existential threat from the Republican Party, which has become a many-armed octopus focused on the goal of strangling democracy and setting up a one-party dictatorship in its place. One of its many tentacles is the obstruction of majority rule in the U.S. Senate. House members threatening the lives of their Democratic colleagues is another. Then there are the Republican-controlled state legislatures stripping power from any election officials—Democratic or Republican--who resist finding voter fraud where there is none. And harassment meant to make uncooperative election officials at all levels quit, so they can be replaced by loyal hacks who will willingly rig the election system for right-wing Republican candidates regardless of actual election results. Legalizing Autocracy Following the violent January 6 coup attempt, Republicans have initiated means only slightly less overt than armed insurrection to achieve the same result. A variety of laws have been introduced and/or passed at the state level to disenfranchise voters. These include purging voter rolls, closing polling sites, restricting early voting, eliminating Sunday voting, and making it illegal to give anyone water who is waiting hours in a long line to vote. But much more dangerous to democracy than these obstacles to voting are the laws introduced or passed by Republican-controlled legislatures in numerous states to take sole control of election processes. Many of these legislatures have taken away the authority of their secretaries of state or balanced election boards, and given that control to themselves. They have also given themselves the power to remove election officials who do their jobs ethically rather than helping to rig the process to ensure future Trumpian candidate “wins.” Where Republicans hold such power, these changes will enable them to deny certification of any votes successfully cast for the opposing party. As early as June 2021, members of at least 10 county election boards in Georgia had been removed, had their position eliminated, or were likely to be removed through new laws passed by the state legislature. Though some of those affected were Republicans, at least five were people of color and most were Democrats. All will likely be replaced by Republicans. In the Kansas legislature, Republicans overrode the Democratic governor’s veto in order to prohibit their Republican secretary of state, who had repeatedly vouched for the security of voting by mail, from settling election-related lawsuits without the legislature’s consent. Arizona Republicans introduced a bill that would largely deprive their Democratic secretary of state of authority over election lawsuits—but would expire when she leaves office. In Arkansas, election control has been stripped from county authorities. In Michigan, Republicans have nominated replacements to serve on boards of election canvassers in eight of Michigan’s 11 largest counties. A number of them are diehard Trumpists. In an effort to counter these anti-democratic laws, the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives managed to pass two bills that would override the states’ voter suppression efforts. The For the People Act would expand voting registration, early voting, voting by mail, and limit gerrymandering. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act would restore federal oversight of discriminatory practices that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority threw out in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder, and halt the Republican-controlled state legislatures’ anti-democratic putsch. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans—abetted by conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema—are using the filibuster to prevent any debate of these voting rights acts, thus assisting the states’ assault on democracy. Many of the power-grabbing state laws are also being challenged in court, but as the legal system seems to move more slowly than molasses on these political matters, a Republican takeover could be completed before a result sees the light of day. Once an authoritarian regime is in power, a contrary legal determination would probably be moot in its effect. Grassroots Fascism Recently, NPR’s On the Media spotlighted the work of the Foundation for Applied Conservative Leadership (Foundation). The Foundation conducts low-cost seminars around the country to further a cynical realpolitik strategy promoting what they call confrontational politics to advance right-wing power. One of the tenets taught by its instructors is that trying to educate people about the rightness of your cause is pointless. According to NPR, “Confrontational politics isn’t about appealing to a broad group of people. It’s about leveraging voter apathy to impose your will on society.” The Foundation’s theory, apparently borrowed from H.L. Richardson’s book, Confrontational Politics, is that only a small percentage of people vote—more or less evenly divided between dedicated Democrats and dedicated Republicans, plus a small percentage for some random party. This leaves only about six percent unspoken for. So, if one can find and manipulate four of that six percent to vote your way, you can sway any given election. To do that, just find their hot button issues, and press. Richardson’s book states: “The role of our activists must be to identify sensitive, high intensity issues and provide leadership by forming structures for single-issue-minded people to join… Traditionalists [Richardson terms conservatives “traditionalists”] need not spend their time trying to convert liberals into conservatives; all they need to do is get single-issue-oriented Americans politically organized.” This tactic is not new. The Republican party has been using it for decades, stirring people’s anger with sloganeering about welfare loafers, abortion, immigrants, gun rights and taxation. The advent of the Tea Party escalated the manipulation of emotion as a counter to reason. Donald Trump and his minions were the foreseeable culmination. Thus, the current right-wing uses dangerous lies to sow confusion and artificially manufacture deadly outrage—whether about vaccination, the concocted critical race theory controversy, or claiming Democrats are child traffickers who steal elections. These tactics are working well for the coup promoters. At this point, in addition to liberal politicians, election oversight officials from secretaries of state down to local county election workers are receiving death threats. Chris Dorr, the executive director of Ohio Gun Owners and his brother Aaron, listed as official instructors of the Foundation, have--along with their brothers Ben and Mathew—created a multistate gun group network which they use to incite anger and hatred. And they have expanded their angry single-issue followers from gun-rights activists to those whose who want to dismantle public education, antivaxxers, anti-abortion activists, militias, and others. According to The Intercept, an online investigative publication, “In true Trumpian fashion, by paying themselves and promoting hate, they may end up spawning a movement.” According to The Daily Beast, detractors in the more mainstream segment of the gun rights movement claim that the Dorr brothers just “throw gas on the fire to generate more donations, contributions, and memberships,” but are ineffective at persuading lawmakers. However, Patrick Parsons, executive director of Georgia Gun Owners, and apparent Dorr fellow traveler, used the principles of confrontation politics to get right-wing extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Greene—no stranger to confrontation—has been a practitioner of harassment and death threats, including language suggesting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be executed for treason, and hounding David Hogg, a student survivor of the Parkland massacre, down a Capitol Hill street when, in 2019, the then-18-old Hogg had come to D.C. to advocate for gun control. Georgia Gun Owners’ Parsons, who became Rep. Greene’s chief of staff, recently resigned, ostensibly to cultivate other right-wing candidates like her. According to Yahoo News, Parsons said that Greene, “asked me to come with her to Washington and help organize her office.” He added, “After eight and a half months fighting the Socialist Democrats and RINOS [Republicans in Name Only] in D.C., it’s time to move on.” Greene said of Parsons: “He’s advised me he will be moving back into the political arena to help elect America First conservatives who can fight alongside me.” Democratic Georgia State Senator Jen Jordan told NPR station WABE in Atlanta early this year that Parsons was effective because he “was really willing to go after people, skirt the truth, say things that weren’t true,” and also used social media to ‘bully” people. The lesson of the Parsons-Greene collaboration is that harnessing people’s unreasoned anger works. But if reason and education are not a match for stirred up emotion—or at least too slow a method to stop an anti-democratic takeover—what will be a match? How does one fight lies and manipulation of emotion if quiet reason doesn’t work? Stopping the Real Steal In the epilogue of his bestselling new book, Midnight in Washington, How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and member of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, writes: If Congress fails to curtail these efforts at disenfranchisement, we the people must succeed nonetheless. If Republican state legislators mandate a purge of the voter rolls, we must reregister. If local GOP elections officials close down our polling site, we must go to another. If they shut down voting on Sunday, we must vote on Monday. If they force us to wait for long hours in the hot sun to vote, we must bring our own shade. We must love our democracy more than they wish to destroy it. We must defend it as democrats, and as Democrats, until the Republican Party breaks free from Donald Trump and the siren song of his depravity. Schiff also writes “So let us fight. Unlike Trump’s violent insurrectionists, our weapon of choice must be the truth, wielded relentlessly. And even as we fight, especially in this fight, we must never lose hold of our basic decency.” I agree wholeheartedly with Schiff’s noble stance. But what he advocates, by itself, is not enough. Because the coup-mongers shout the truth down and then step over that truth as if it were not there. And overcoming the obstacles to voting will make no difference if the Republican takeover of state election apparatus is not reversed before the 2022 election. The nation is running out of time. The House Select Committee has issued subpoenas in pursuit of its coup investigation, and defenders of democracy are bringing lawsuits to challenge the various forms of voter suppression. But Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tortoise-like pace in pursuing such lawsuits, as well as his 21-day delay in charging Steve Bannon with contempt for defying the Select Committee’s subpoena, betray a lack of enthusiasm for aggressively pursuing justice. If Garland is not deliberately undermining that pursuit, perhaps he thinks he’s still a judge rather than a prosecutor. In any event, he appears to be the wrong man for this job. If legal challenges are not brought and completed before the next election, the states’ anti-democratic laws could result in a Republican takeover of the House—which would end the January 6 coup investigation the Republicans so vigorously have opposed. That election could also determine who controls state election systems for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, while journalists are now exposing Trumpian lies and threats to democracy, exposing what fascists are doing does not keep them from doing it. Despite news coverage, Republican machinations continue to grind inexorably onward toward dictatorship by a minority. If our democracy is to survive, more than exposing those trying to destroy it must be done. Adhering to Congressman Schiff’s standard of basic decency means one will not lie, cheat, or physically intimidate or harm, as the forces arrayed against democracy are doing. But against the slogans of a mob and its leaders, it is impossible for quiet, reasonable truth to be heard. This puts those trying to combat those forces at a disadvantage. To be heard and heeded, the defenders of democracy need to fight fire with fire using some of the right-wing’s tactics. It is possible to do this without losing one’s soul. The Democrats and other defenders of freedom need to stop operating in a defensive mode. Stop talking reasonably about compromise with those who have no compromise in them. Instead, organize truth squads to call a lie a lie—plainly. Without diffidence or apology. Use the truth as your relentless weapon—but use it to go on the attack. Wield it aggressively. Shout it as loudly as those who would shout it down. And don’t back down. Dismiss the siren call for a bipartisanship, which is being used only to weaken one’s position and resolve. Instead, BE partisan. Be partisans for democracy—and proud of it! 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.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 59 By Laurence Lerman / New York City On Wednesday, November 10, armed with two N95 masks (one that I wore and the other as a backup), a Fun Size pack of M&Ms and my childhood friend Dave, whom I’ve been seeing Bond films with for decades, I went to the movies to see an 11:10 a.m. show of the new James Bond film No Time to Die. As it was the first time I was planning to see a film in a theater in nearly two years, the outing–while not as complexly plotted as the film itself-required some careful maneuvering. (My last theatrical experience was with the spiky Will Ferrell-Julia Louis-Dreyfus comedy Downhill, which I caught at the AMC Empire 25 on 42nd Street back in January, 2020.) For my return to the theatrical experience, I had played it as safely as I could by waiting a month into the film’s run and then choosing what I deemed to be a less-trafficked Manhattan theater during a hopefully less-crowded time of the day. I went with the Regal Battery Park Stadium 11, a multiplex so far downtown and off the beaten track (it’s on the far side of the West Side Highway!) that I had to remind my wife that we actually had been there once before to see the holiday comedy Elf back when we first began dating in the fall of 2003. Well, not to downplay the value of the event, but the multi-screen complex was virtually empty, we were the only ones in the theater showing our film and the overall experience was essentially just like going to any movie theater on a weekday morning late in a film’s run. The box office proper wasn’t being utilized at the Regal and tickets were being issued at the concession counter, which was understandable as there weren’t massive crowds that required servicing. The theater workers—the young lady at the counter who asked to see our proof of vaccination and sold me our tickets and the equally young man who then scanned them—were both wearing masks, and they each reminded us that we had to wear our masks in the theater except while we were eating or drinking, during which time we had to remain seated. Check. (The three major movie exhibition chains— AMC, Regal, and Cinemark—have all said that fully vaccinated customers no longer have to wear masks inside of their theaters, but they still abide by all state or local ordinances that are in place, hence the masks.) We skipped the concessions (save for the M&Ms I smuggled in), entered a very clean-looking theater and sat in our prechosen seats, leaving a socially-distanced seat between us. The fact that we were the only customers there and that it was a rather unremarkable experience didn’t make sitting down in an actual theater for the first time in 22 months any less an exciting moment. And when the lights went down a few minutes later and the first of a pair of trailers began to roll, I’ve got to admit that my heart began to beat a little faster. My friend and I looked at each other just as the MGM logo at the head of the film appeared onscreen and he said to me, his voice slightly muffled beneath his mask, “Bond. Finally.” “Hell, yeah,” I responded, beneath my own. “Here we go.” No Time to Die, the 25th installment in the celebrated 007 film series based on the best-selling novels of Ian Fleming, marks the fifth and final outing for actor Daniel Craig as super-spy James Bond, a role he first portrayed in 2006’s Casino Royale. The broad strokes of No Time to Die’s story, which takes place five years after the ending of the franchise’s previous film, 2015’s Spectre, finds Bond retired from Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and living a quiet, secluded life in Jamaica. It’s not too long before Bond is approached by his old CIA buddy Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) and convinced to slip back into his shoulder holster to help Leiter track down a missing scientist who’s developed a lethal bioweapon. MI6 also gets involved, including a new agent named Nomi (Lashana Lynch), who has taken Bond’s place in the organization, even inheriting his code number and literally becoming the new “007,” the successor to Bond’s “007” code number. Orbiting the unsanctioned mission are Bond’s former love, psychotherapist Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) and the supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), who Bond took down in the previous film and has since been locked up, Hannibal Lecter-style, in a high-security British prison. No Time to Die is the first Bond film ever to be directed by an American, the Oakland-born Cary Fukunaga, who’s best known for the 2014 HBO crime series True Detective and the war drama Beasts of No Nation (2015). Filled with intricacies and, regrettably, a handful of contrivances, it clocks in at a daunting 163 minutes, making it the longest-ever entry in the Bond canon. But even as it occasionally drowns in its own plot, most of the key Bond elements are still in place: the exotic locales, the slinky opening credits and song (sung here by Billie Eilish), the magnificently mounted action scenes and chases, and the striking women, including lovely Ana de Armas, a standout as a high-kicking agent who briefly teams up with Bond in Cuba. There are also the requisite appearances by Bond’s work family (Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris as “M,” “Q” and “Moneypenny,” respectively) and a menacing baddie determined to do nasty things to the Free World (an unexceptional Rami Malek, whose dearth of screen time doesn’t make him as menacing as he should be). What’s not there? Bond’s once-routine bed-hopping and his weaponized gadgetry are nowhere to be seen. (As Wishaw’s “Q” said a couple of movies back, “Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that sort of thing anymore.”) Taking their place are growing questions about the viability of a field agent like Bond and the existence of shadowy spy organizations in a post-Cold War world of computer hackers and cyber-terrorists. Over the course of the film, there’s plenty of respect and fan service offered in tribute to Bond’s proud cinematic legacy. They stretch from the opening credit sequence which echo those from Dr. No (the franchise’s 1961 debut) to a number of familiar music cues that hearken back to previous Bond films to several notable snatches of dialogue. (Bond murmurs “We’ve got all the time in the world...” several times, which is a key line in the Bond pantheon). Emotional resonance, love betrayed and Bond’s self-reflection have all played a part in the Daniel Craig era, moving the character away from the traditional adventure-seeking, wisecracking and dapper dude of previous incarnations more to that of a troubled and tragic hero. Craig’s Bond has been on that course for his entire cycle of connected films, ever since the seeming betrayal and violent death of the love of his life, treasury agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale. Indeed, with each subsequent entry since Craig’s debut, the films have inched closer and closer to being romantic tragedies—as opposed to straight-on spy adventures—shooting, strangling, globe-trotting and car chasing, notwithstanding. Maybe that’s why Craig’s inaugural Bond effort from 16 years back remains the best of his five films, as it was the first to embrace the classic elements of the Bond film franchise (which had been alive and thriving for 35 years old when he took over) while offering a far more serious, pensive and emotional character than previous Bonds Sean Connery, Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan ever did. Craig makes Bond’s vulnerability his defining characteristic, and it’s been on full display for a decade-and-a-half, all the way up to the closing minutes of No Time to Die. And for Craig’s quintet of films, it works. It really does. And I think that the climax and conclusion of Craig’s swansong, while it takes a long time to get to, is a satisfying one. When pondering the enduring popularity and longevity of the Bond franchise, I remind myself that every Bond era over the past 60 years has produced at least one or two very good or maybe even great films. Sure, some of them are merely passable, but practically all of them represent, at the very least, a fine way to spend a unscheduled evening in front of the TV (or at a revival house, if you can find one playing a gorgeous, newly struck Bond print). Now, this might sound like I’m settling or even condescending, but I promise you I’m not. When you think about all the—wait for it—product that’s out there these days, that a Bond film can be revisited with a minimum of impatience and a degree of pleasure is truly saying a lot. And that’s the way it’s been since I starting watching them on the ABC Sunday Night Movie back in the early Seventies. As for No Time to Die, don’t grieve if you don’t dig the whole thing or if you feel it should have gone in another direction, because there will always be another Bond movie around the bend. Just like it said on the screen of the empty pandemic multiplex at the end of No Time to Die’s lengthy credit crawl: JAMES BOND WILL RETURN. And that’s enough to leave any fan, serious or casual, both shaken and stirred. 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 Andy Borowitz November 15, 2021 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what congressional Republicans are calling an act of flagrant overreach by the Department of Justice, the former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been arrested for contempt of soap. The basis for the arrest is a rarely enforced 1858 statute requiring White House employees to conform to minimal standards of hygiene during their tenure with the executive branch. A defiant Bannon said that he would fight the federal government’s “outrageous” attempt to make him come into contact with soap and water, and declared that his avoidance of both was a life-style choice. “You can lock me up but you can’t hose me down,” he thundered. 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.

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs | CNN.com November 13, 2021 Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia Universit 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) - Consumer prices in October 2021 were 6.2% higher than a year ago. This is the highest year-over-year price inflation since 1990. It raises three main questions. What is the cause? What should be done? And in particular, how should it affect the design of the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation? There are several factors at play. None, however, should deflect from the importance of the longer-term Build Back Better agenda. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, which leads the media campaign against tax increases on the rich and corporations, is calling on Congress to "kill the bill" in the supposed interest of fighting inflation. Sen. Joe Manchin, working tirelessly in favor of the rich and the corporate lobbyists, is also pointing to inflation as a reason to delay, cut, or oppose the legislation. Such opposition to BBB completely mixes up the short-term and the long-term, and utterly confuses deficit spending to fight Covid-19 with fully paid-for spending to fund long-term reforms. BBB is not about the next month, or the next year; it is about the next generation. We need to set a long-term direction for the country toward a fairer and more productive society by enabling the working poor in America to get health care, family leave, affordable drug prices, child care, and affordable community college. Unlike the temporary Covid-19 spending, the long-term BBB outlays should be fully paid for by higher taxes on the rich and corporations, which have enjoyed a massive windfall in the past two years. If BBB is paid for with taxes, then it won't add to the public debt or create long-term inflationary pressures. Inflation results when the overall demand for goods and services exceeds the available supply at today's prices. Therefore, inflation can result from a rise in demand, a fall in supply, or some combination of the two. Analyzing the current inflation requires that we parse the demand-side and supply-side factors at play. This is not simple. The Covid-19 pandemic has whipsawed the economy, both in the US and globally, more than any other shock since World War II. The swings in demand and supply, because of lockdowns and government policies, are bigger than the 1970s oil shocks and the 2008 financial crisis. We are in somewhat uncharted territory. Still, we can identify some of the key factors driving demand and supply. The story starts, of course, with Covid-19. In March 2020, the US and world economy partially shut down to slow the spread of the virus. The shutdown mainly affected travel, tourism, hotels, entertainment, restaurants, and schools. Most of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing (the goods-producing sectors) continued operations, as did most office-bound activities that could be shifted online. With tens of millions of service-sector jobs quickly ended, the government resorted to a massive transfer of income -- payments to households and businesses funded by deficits -- especially to keep household disposable income from plummeting. Money sent by the government to most Americans prevented the disastrous loss of income of tens of millions of households, which could have led to a massive collapse of consumer spending. In fact, households saved most of the government payments, as they were unable to spend the money on activities out of the home. These payments were provided by Congress in three distinct packages, two under Trump, in March 2020 (CARES Act) and December 2020 (Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021), and one under Biden, in March 2021 (American Rescue Plan). The federal government ran unprecedented peacetime deficits, around 14.9% of GDP in 2020 and 10.3% of GDP in 2021, to pay for the increased outlays. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve bought up a remarkable amount of public debt, thereby expanding the monetary base by around $2.4 trillion between March 2020 and August 2021, and thereby preventing a liquidity crisis -- that is, a sudden drying up of lending and borrowing as occurred, for example, in the 2008 financial crisis. Much of the cheap money found its way into stock prices, which have soared. That in turn has boosted the wealth of the superrich. These were extraordinary measures, certainly the largest fiscal and monetary expansion in peacetime history. It was indeed very hard to calibrate the proper magnitude of the response given the uncertainties over the size and timing of the Covid-19 disruption. In retrospect, the demand measures were a bit too large, but we should still credit these strong steps with preventing a much deeper and prolonged economic downturn. The economy might well have fallen into a deep contraction or even a depression but for these proactive policies. At the same time, the supply side has been negatively impacted, especially in three areas that account for a considerable amount of the recent price increases. First, when petroleum-based transportation plummeted in 2020, oil prices collapsed (even reaching a negative price in Texas one day in April 2020). Saudi Arabia responded by cutting daily oil production by around 1 million barrels (from roughly 10 million to 9 million barrels per day). Yet when demand picked up this year, Saudi production was brought back online gradually, causing world oil prices to soar in the short term. Second, a surge in demand for electronics components, notably microchips, has led to a shortage of parts for new car production, and a sharp fall in monthly automobile production in the US, from 197,000 cars in September 2020 to just 84,000 cars this September. This supply shortfall has caused the prices of new and used cars to soar. Third, after a sharp fall in consumer demand for and production of meat products early on in the pandemic, demand for meat is now soaring while production and shipments are still lagging behind, causing sticker shock on consumer meat prices. In summary, both demand-side and supply-side factors are at play. Overall, demand is high, pumped up by enormous budget deficits and easy money, while supply shortages are hitting energy, food products and automobiles. While energy prices are up 30% in October (over October 2020), meat prices are up 14.5%, new car and truck prices are up 9.8%, and used car and truck prices are up 26.4%, services other than energy are up by only 3.2%. So, the question is what to do. First, the economy does not need any more fiscal or monetary stimulus. The budget deficit is expected to drop from 10.3% of GDP this year to around 4.6% of GDP in 2022, according to CBO estimates, and this is a good thing. The Fed, likewise, should tighten monetary policy step by step, with interest rates rising from today's rock-bottom levels (0.05% on 3-month treasury bills) to more historically normal levels in the next few years. OPEC should increase production to reduce sky-high oil prices in the short run, and also plan for a downward trajectory of production over the coming years as electric vehicles replace cars with internal combustion engines, thereby driving down the global demand for oil. In summary, inflation in the coming months should be controlled by ending stimulus spending, tightening monetary policy, slashing the budget deficit and increasing OPEC monthly oil production to counter the recent surge in global oil and gas prices. At the same time, we should persevere in making long-term federal investments in health, education, and child care for the working poor, paying for those policies with higher taxes on the superrich and corporations. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/13/opinions/us-can-fight-inflation-build-back-better-sachs/index.html

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 Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area “A tradition is a custom or belief that has existed for a long time,” according to Collins English Dictionary. But how does such a tradition actually begin in a family? I’m specifically talking about food traditions, which have more meaning than we usually realize. Holidays, especially Thanksgiving, are loaded with specific dishes that are symbols of our national heritage and culture. When did that wonderful sage-and-thyme-scented stuffing become a regular filling in your Thanksgiving turkey? It had to start somewhere. Even more curious to me is why we are all so wedded to these preparations. Have you ever tried to swap your standard buttered Brussels sprouts for something other than what your family is used to? For heavens sakes, no way! You’ll have a mutiny at your holiday table. How about changing up the mashed potatoes by adding trendy bleu cheese and bacon? Heck, no! Sacrilege. How about switching your green bean casserole made with cream of mushroom soup to green beans with lemon zest and basil? Your family will stage a coup and head for the door! Have you reached the point in your Thanksgiving tradition where you offer two different stuffings? One that is the standard and the other an experimental recipe that you cut out of a magazine? I’ve even seen three different preparations offered at one holiday table to satisfy everyone’s itch. It’s gotten crazy. Establishing a holiday tradition might just take place organically. This happened to me, my husband and two children back in the early 1990s. Every year. my husband’s parents wintered in Florida starting on November 1 to escape the Michigan cold. As a result, we never had Thanksgiving together. One year I solved that problem by hosting a pumpkin-carving evening, featuring both a traditional Thanksgiving feast and pumpkin carving. These were no ordinary-looking pumpkins: my father-in-law and my husband, both foot surgeons with terrific fine motor skills and artistic talent, turned out some fairly fantastic carvings. Our kids did their best based on their ages, sometimes using stickers or paint to help the process along. I would roast a stuffed turkey and serve homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, Brussels sprouts — the whole nine yards. A year later, we said, “Let’s carve pumpkins like last year.” That began our annual tradition. I’m proud to say that my kids still carry on the pumpkin carving session in their home with my son Ben’s two little boys. That’s how I created a traditional event. But how do we transition from one tradition to another at the holiday table? I actually was able to do this about 20 years ago. We always had to have sweet potato casserole with toasted marshmallows on top. Could I actually introduce another choice, and maybe, just maybe, replace said marshmallow-topped casserole? That first year, we had both dishes. We eventually dropped the marshmallow affair. For today’s recipe, I’m offering my sweet potato pudding with oat pecan topping, which is now our go-to side dish. My son, Ben, has picked up the baton and makes it in his home as I make it in mine. This year, we will all be together at my home for the first time in 18 years! I might even let Ben make the casserole and have my daughter Hanna make our traditional pumpkin cheesecake, as she has always done. Who’s going to go out on a limb this year and introduce a new side dish to their Thanksgiving feast? Let us know here at The Insider what you make and how it was received. Have fun preparing your meal, sharing with family and friends, and being thankful for all that we have. Enjoy a wonderful holiday! Sweet Potato Pudding Yield: 1-1/2 qt. casserole 2 1/2 lb. sweet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1 1/2” pieces 2 lg. eggs 3 Tbs. pure maple syrup 2 Tbs. pure vanilla extract 1 Tbs. lemon juice 1 tsp. salt Topping: 1/2 c. packed golden brown sugar 1/2 c. chopped pecans 1/2 c. old-fashioned rolled oats 2 oz. cold butter, cut into bits Boil the sweet potatoes in a large pot of salted water until very tender, about 12 minutes. Cool to room temperature. Puree the potatoes in a food processor. Scrape into a large bowl. While the potatoes are cooking, make the topping: In a small bowl, using your fingertips, mix the brown sugar, pecans, oats, and butter bits until it holds together but is still crumbly. Reserve. Whisk the eggs, syrup, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt in a bowl. Blend into the sweet potato puree. Grease a 2 qt. shallow casserole. Pour in the sweet potato mixture. Sprinkle the pecan topping all over. Bake in a 350° oven for about 45 minutes, or until the pudding is set and the topping is bubbly. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. 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.