(Shimon Peres & me, Jerusalem, August, 1991)

I first met Shimon Peres 25 years ago last month, as part of a small group of public officials on a fact-finding mission to Israel, sponsored by New York’s Jewish Community Relations Council. Peres, then Chairman of the out-of-power Israeli Labour Party and a member of the Israeli Knesset, talked passionately with us about peace and democracy for nearly an hour.

Speaking freely on the day before Mikhail Gorbachev returned to power during a tumultuous time in the Soviet Union, Peres schooled us in history happening before our eyes, not far from the classroom where me met, in Jerusalem:

“ I don’t believe in reincarnation: what is dead is dead. The greatest ideological battle of our time has been between democracy and communism and democracy won. The apparatchiks have neither the means nor the promise to bring back the old ways. They can’t make Russia great again; they can’t make food grow overnight…”

Then Shimon Peres, looked squarely at each one of us, underscoring every word:

“ The Russians were able to sacrifice freedom and unable to create equality; they wanted to enrich everybody—instead, they impoverished everybody; they wanted to create a classless society; instead, they created a governing class with special privileges; they wanted to create a people with a nation, only to see nationalism still in existence. After 70 years of sacrifice, they discovered they couldn’t compete with the United States. Instead, they created a double hunger: for food and for freedom.”

Someone in our group, asked Peres about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, since he was so closely identified with the effort to achieve it:

“Who wants today to copy Russia? Who copies a failure? The three basic problems in Israel’s future are: 1) We must achieve peace before the Middle East goes nuclear; 2) We must keep Israel from becoming a bi-national state.   We may end up keeping the territories as Likud wants, but losing our country. What makes a country is not land, but people. We don’t want to dominate others. Who is a hero? The one who dominates himself; 3) Economic Problems: we cannot live forever on aid of the U.S. Right now, world markets are more important; dangers and opportunities are regional, not national. We cannot solve our problems without reorganizing our water sources.”

Peres was preaching now, his soul on fire:

“We should combine the oil of the Saudis, with the water of Turkey and the know-how of Israel to build a common market. For us, the way the peace will wind up is more important than how it will be obtained. For us, it is a matter of life and death; the only option we have is to become a medical center for the region, a technological center for the region, what with the number of Soviet doctors and engineers coming to Israel. We shall have to give back the territories—they should be demilitarized. They would run their lives without our intervention, such as Gaza. Jerusalem would have to remain united. We have to work toward a regional economy with regional solutions…The motivation for the Palestinian conflict may disappear if it’s solved along the lines I have suggested.”

Peres’ bright eyes sparkled as he spoke to us, outlining his plan for peace throughout the region. He noted that Israel did not have territorial issues with Eqypt or Jordan, but only with Syria, over the Golan Heights, which, he noted, “was not a holy place.”

I asked Peres to suggest some alternatives for dealing with the Golan and Gaza.

“I’m not in the mood to enter into negotiations, “ Peres said. “When we start negotiations, then we’ll see. One day, Saddam Hussein will disappear. Our enemies are not the people, nor a religion. We must judge the land by its’ people. What is Gaza? 80,000 acres and 800,000 people. For me, Gaza doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to the people who live there. I’d give back Gaza; I’d admit it is a fact of life—it is theirs. The same goes for the West Bank. We have to cut the geography in accordance with the demography. Both areas would have to be demilitarized.”

When he finished answering our questions, Shimon Peres, dressed in an open-necked, short-sleeved sport shirt that matched mine, came over to each of us, shook our hands and posed for photos. I told him I worked with Mario Cuomo and his eyes danced:

“ Please give the Governor my warmest regards,” Peres told me.

The following year, I accompanied Cuomo on his first trip to Israel, watching as the Governor and Peres embraced like two long lost brothers; marveling at how each resembled the other in voice, manner, gravitas and appearance.

Now, Mario Cuomo and Shimon Peres are both gone, and their lives challenge us to ensure that the kind of rational thinking, compassion and constructive, visionary solutions each sought, bloom forever, like trees in a desert irrigated by man and bathed in the divine light of love and human dignity.

                                 (Getty Images, Levittown, Long Island)

Long Island’s Hofstra University is the perfect place to host the first Presidential Debate of 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Monday night, September 26, and not simply because I’m proud of the place where I graduated from Law School in 1984.
Growing up in a struggling Italian-American family on Long Island, Hofstra always represented a working family’s dream. For my mother and father, attending my law school graduation at Hofstra when both were nearing 70, was witnessing a child succeed beyond their wildest expectations. Like other Long Islanders, my parents sacrificed much by moving from Brooklyn to “the country” to give their children a better life, a backyard to play in, and a better education — the cost of which, meant higher property tax bills for many homeowners.
When their children moved out of the Long Island split-level homes in which we were raised, Long Island’s working and middle-class senior citizens found themselves saddled with property tax bills that exceeded their mortgage payments. Many faced unpleasant choices: moving away from family and friends to a more affordable place; moving in with family to make ends meet, or losing their homes entirely.
It was against that backdrop, as property taxes of financially strapped Long Island homeowners soared to among the highest in the nation, that New York’s Republican Governor George Pataki and both houses of the State Legislative enacted the STAR Program (NYS School Tax Relief) in 1997. The legislative intent of the school tax rebate program was clear: to reduce spiraling school district property taxes for senior citizens on a limited income so they could continue to live in their homes.The law, promoted by many Nassau & Suffolk County legislators, was clearly designed to keep struggling suburban senior citizens in their communities.

The STAR Program — which presently costs New York State’s taxpayers $3 billion per year — was never intended to benefit extraordinarily wealthy individuals, like Donald Trump. Strict income limitations were enacted in the Basic and Enhanced categories of the plan where a combined household income of less than $500,000 qualified a family for the Basic plan and an income under $86,000 for the Enhanced Benefits section. The clear intent of the legislation was that millionaires and billionaires did not warrant such tax relief.
However, the New York City Tax Department reported this month that one senior citizen who applied for the “Basic” STAR property tax credit, for two consecutive years, was Donald J. Trump. In order to do that, Trump would, under the law, need a household income of less than $500,000. The Trump Tower unit for which he is claiming the exemption would have to be his primary residence.
Trump’s troubling use of the STAR Program’s property tax rebate for economically hard-pressed senior citizens is made even more suspicious by the fact that he has long claimed an annual income in excess of $500,000. If his income is that high, then he used the STAR tax credit illegally; if his income is under $500,000 per year, then Trump has being lying about his income for years.
In addition to hosting the first Presidential Debate this year, there are two other ways Hofstra University can serve the nation — and millions of senior citizen suburban taxpayers — in the days leading up to, and after, the September 26th debate held on the Long Island campus. Hofstra’s Law School, headed by its’ brilliant Dean Eric Lane — my former law professor and an expert on Legislative Intent and legal craftsmanship — can encourage its’ Tax Law leaders to conduct pro-bono research into determining whether the STAR property tax rebate program was intended to benefit someone as, allegedly, wealthy as Donald Trump. While they’re at it, Hofstra’s Tax Law experts, can examine Trump’s $885 million of public tax abatements and benefits and determine if he’s lived up to his commitments to NYC and NYS.
Then, a small team of Hofstra Law’s professors in Ethics, a field pioneered by the legendary legal scholar Monroe Friedman, could examine the Trump Organization’s grab of $150,000 from a special 9/11 Recovery Fund, set aside for small businesses in NYC harmed by the attacks upon the World Trade Center. Following the 9/11 attacks, Trump claimed that his skyscraper at 40 Wall Street was eligible for such emergency relief funds, despite admitting that his building suffered no damage.
Hofstra University is the perfect place to raise these questions at the Presidential Debate, and beyond, since many citizens in the Long Island/NYC Metropolitan Area community it serves, have an extraordinarily high stake in the STAR Program’s continued solvency, in tax fairness, and in ensuring that limited 9/11 recovery funds are used only by eligible New Yorkers.

Rogers — Ailes & Stone,
Errant semen of Roy Cohn.
Manafort, the Russian Spy,
Just another slith’ring lie.
Like a pile of fetid crap,
Flies keep landing in Trump’s lap.
Bannon, Rudy, Christie, blech!
Pardon me, while I wretch.
Swindlers, losers, racists all
Lining up behind Trump’s stall.
Cheering him squeeze out each turd,
Seeing GOLD in every word.
Rogers — Ailes & Stone.
Errant semen of Roy Cohn.

With Donald Trump’s “montage of misogyny”, as detailed by the New York Times, getting messier and more misogynistic each moment, and with Bernie Sanders support among many progressive Democrats continuing to grow, there is one, and only one, perfect candidate for Hillary Clinton to select right now, as her running mate: Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The reasons for this truly revolutionary, all-female ticket for President and Vice-President of the United States may not, at first look, be obvious. For months, as I’ve been floating the idea among friends and colleagues inside and out of politics, the standard retort has been that this country would never elect two women to the two highest offices in the land; that a national ticket needs to be “demographically” balanced; and, in a year when the Latino vote has been highlighted, that Hillary’s running mate must be Latino. In fact, until the beginning of this year, I was a prisoner of that old way of thinking as well, favoring a ticket of Hillary Clinton and HHS Secretary Julian Castro of Texas.

Three major developments over the past six-months have changed that and pointed the way to the future:
First, a seminal early January interview on Decider — a media industry website– with NBC Universal’s EVP of Digital, Evan Shapiro, framed the issue in a way few, if any, politicians or pundits were looking at it. Here’s what Shapiro, the smartest human being on the planet when it comes to understanding all media and its applicability, had to say:

“ Television consumption defies demographics in ways that were the norm 25 years ago. I binge-watched Jessica Jones over Thanksgiving weekend with my wife and two daughters, ages 17 & 20. What is that demographic? That’s really a psychographic around a certain niche. It’s more about psychology than demography.”
The thing to understand about Shapiro, who now heads NBC’s comedy platform SeeSo (www.Seeso.com) and also guided the IFC network, Sundance and Participant TV before coming to NBC Universal, is that he just doesn’t pull this stuff out of his “very good brain,” the way Donald Trump makes up foreign policy. Shapiro is to media research what Nate Silver is to political data: he is the guru. When he first arrived at NBC, Shapiro embarked upon a massive research project, interviewing 11,000 people about their on-line viewing habits. He currently has nine more media platforms in development for NBC and every decision is based upon meticulous research and analysis. So when Evan Shapiro says “It’s more about psychology than demography,” everyone would be wise to listen. The implication for media — and for society — is positively McCluhan-esque.
Secondly, while Donald Trump, trained in Reality TV, showed early signs of instinctively acting upon the Shapiro Shift away from demographics to psychographics, he has been acting like a contestant on “Survivor” over the past several weeks, eating his own skin– especially regarding his life-long Achilles High Heel: Women. From his insults to Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly and Hillary Clinton, to his adolescent spitballing of Heidi Cruz, to his bare suggestion of “some form of punishment” for women having an abortion, and now with his grotesque calling of Hillary Clinton the “Enabler-in-Chief,” holding her–and all women responsible for their husbands’ sexual transgressions, Trump has singlehandely put women’s rights and gender quality at the epicenter of the 2016 Presidential campaign. Does his latest anti-women rant make Trump’s first-wife, Ivana, an “Enabler” for allowing him to flaunt his then-mistress Marla Maples in front of her and their children on the ski-slopes of Aspen? Preposterous, insulting and amoral….and misogynistic.
Trump’s terrible and tacky tactics, and childish behavior, are clearly not the product of a very good brain, nor heart, nor any moral compass for that matter —  and have exacerbated the already large advantage Democrats hold with female voters. In 2012, Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney 55–44 percent among women, sealing his re-election. In separate polls conducted by both NBC and the New York Times, the GOP front-runner has a 70% negative rating among all women — Republicans and Democrats. If the election were held today, Hillary Clinton clobbers Trump, 58% to 31% among ALL women, a towering 27-point advantage. In short, Donald Trump’s deranged diatribes, have wiped out any political demographic concerning women, and created his own psychotic psychographic: the crazier he gets, and makes the GOP look, the better the Democrats do with all women, especially crucial suburban women, as new polls from Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania, three key states, continue to show.
Finally, the more successful Bernie Sanders is, the more delegates he amasses and the more state primaries or caucuses he wins, the more likely it becomes that the Democratic Party will need to be reunited across ideological — or psychographic–lines, rather than along traditional demographic lines. There is only one person who can do that and double down on the tectonic gender chasm between both parties: Elizabeth Warren.
Clinton’s selection of Warren would represent the triumph of psychographics as an astute — and research tested — political strategy. It would bring about the “revolution” Bernie and his surrogates have been advocating, since few things could be more revolutionary in the United States than the first all-female national ticket in history. And, Elizabeth Warren — whose “Warren Wing” of the Democratic Party made it possible for Bernie to find fertile ground in a party he wasn’t a member of until last year — gives Sanders’ supporters  a place their psyches and their votes can comfortably call home. No one knows more about taking on Wall Street–or calling out abusers (did anyone say Trump?) of bankruptcy laws–than Elizabeth Warren, an acknowledged expert on the subject. And no one knows better how to use the law–and public outrage– against money grubbing profiteers who cash in on the misery of folks whose homes have been foreclosed, than Elizabeth Warren.
Trump, a spoiled little rich boy who rode to his ritzy private school as a child in his Mommy’s rose-colored Rolls Royce, has never received the discipline he’s been receiving from Elizabeth Warren. He simply can’t deal with her, because he’s afraid of her steel will and her tough refusal to give in to his insatiable desire to devour every dollar he sees. Just think of how Trump and his misogynist movement masquerading as a political party for the last half-century, would flail and fail in the face of two of the most intelligent, articulate female public figures in history, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.

The Clinton/Warren revolution has arrived and it will be televised–psychographically, of course.,