I knew I heard that arrogant, defiant, stupidly-smug tone of voice before.

At first, I thought it was my brother’s voice, condemning the “fuckin’ FBI,” for laying out the evidence that sent him to prison for Income Tax Evasion over 30 years ago. 

When Trump told his advisors that the highly-classified, top secret documents he had in his possession were  “not theirs; it’s mine,” shades of my oldest brother’s, and his associate John Gotti’s, brazen bravado, bullying, and whining about law enforcement came to mind. 

Then, I sat straight up in my chair.  I knew where Trump got this gallows gangsterism from.   Ironically, it was in an earlier FBI Affidavit that sent another political leader—and a pal of Trump’s– to prison 10-years ago. 

I tore through my copious files of past cases of political corruption, and came upon the utterly damning 75-page racketeering and criminal corruption affidavit  

against the disgraced, impeached, convicted,  ex-Governor of Illinois, Rob “Blago” Blagojevich, who tried frantically to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate  seat in November, 2008, right after Obama was elected President, and resigned from the Senate.  

Caught on an authorized wiretap, in an ongoing, 6-year government corruption case, Blagojevich’s, conduct dripped with desperation and criminal intent to use his public office for personal gain.  Blago was under enormous personal financial pressure.   He could feel the hot breath of the Illinois’ State Legislature’s case for impeachment against him.    His sense of urgency to cash in on his public office—while he still held it– leaped off of every page of the FBI’s meticulous affidavit against Blagojevich–an essential part of the government’s case for showing probable cause of the commission of crimes, and getting Court approval of an arrest warrant of the powerful Democratic politician.  Blago’s voice was unmistakably loud and clear to FBI Agents listening in:

“I’ve got this thing and its fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.  I’m not gonna do it.” 

                              — (Page 59, FBI affidavit in support of an application for a criminal complaint and corresponding arrest warrant charging ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, December 7, 2008).

Bingo, or “Blago” more appropriately!   There it was.  

I could clearly hear Trump making similar statements in precisely the same, self-righteous, victimhood voice:  “I’ve got these things, these classified documents, and they are fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving them up for fucking nothing.  I’m not gonna do it.”

Only, unlike Blagojevich, Trump wasn’t caught on a government wiretap:  his own people, his own recklessness, ostentatious obstruction of justice, and colossal callousness toward consequences of his own actions,  did him in.  And, he was playing with far more fire than Blago was:  top-secret, highly classified documents with enormous national security implications.  Selling a Senate seat was chump change in comparison.  Trump’s extortion of the United States was potentially jeopardizing millions of lives, and thousands of “human sources” in our Intelligence Agencies.

Of course Trump would view Blago’s blatantly illegal behavior as giving him a green light to “monetize” everything he could get his hands on in government.  They were buddies who first bonded on “Celebrity Apprentice,” April 4, 2010—nearly one year to the day after Blagojevich was charged by a Federal Grand Jury on 16 counts of racketeering, fraud and extortion. 

 Although Trump “fired” Blago that night on “Celebrity Apprentice,” he saw at least one thing in him he greatly admired:  

“ I have great respect for you, Governor.  I have great respect for your tenacity, for the fact that you just don’t give up.”

Two years later, on March 15, 2012– the day Blagojevich reported to Federal Prison in Colorado to begin serving out his 14 year term—Trump, always acutely attuned to trotting out a “victim-model” that he might someday find useful, tweeted:

“ It’s outrageous that Blagojevich goes to jail for 14 yrs, when killers and sex offenders are walking the streets.  Is this Justice?  I don’t think so.”  (Trump Tweet March 16, 2012)

Trump must have had his old friend Jeffrey Epstein on his mind when he lamented “sex offenders walking the streets.”  Just the year before in 2011, Epstein told the New York Post:

“ I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an offender.  It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

Rather than bloviating about stealing bagels, Trump continued to be obsessed with Blago’s case and his  “unfair” punishment well into his Presidency.  One month after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Blagojevich’s appeal for the second time, in April, 2018, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was “considering” commuting Blagojevich’s 14 year prison sentence, which he described as  “an overly harsh penalty” for what essentially amounts to a “foolish statement.” (Chicago Tribune).   Typically, Trump failed to mention that his buddy Blago’s “foolish statement,” and his actions, were illegal. 

One week after Trump’s May 31, 2018, statement on Air Force One, Blago’s lawyers filed a request with the White House for Executive Clemency.  The following summer, Trump reiterated that he was “very strongly considering commutation of Blagojevich’s sentence because he felt the corrupt, racketeering, extortionist, impeached, ex-Illinois Governor had been “mistreated.”   There it was again.  That “fuckin’” FBI acting against such cute and curmudgeonly criminals, like the Teflon Don Gotti, with whom Trump did business, and Blow-dried Blago, for whom Trump had “great respect .”

In February, 2020, when he was up for re-election, Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year criminal sentence, after the guy who actually did try to sell a U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, had served 8 years in prison.   On February 19, 2020, Trump Tweeted:  

“Rob Blagojevich did not sell the Senate seat.  He served 8 years in prison, with many remaining.  He paid a big price.  Another Comey & Gang deal!”

It didn’t matter to Trump that Blago “did not sell the Senate seat” because he was caught, or that James Comey was notthe head of the FBI when Blagojevich was arrested, convicted and sent to jail.  That happened during the 13-year tenure of Robert Mueller as FBI Director, who also sent Gotti and Bernie Madoff away to prison, where—regardless of how both appeared to be coated in Teflon while killing and swindling people–they died.  Which is, perhaps,  “Teflon” Trump’s biggest fear.

But there it was again, the old gangster grievance against the “fucking FBI,” which  John Gotti and other New York mobsters–put away on airtight evidence and federal wiretap transcripts gathered by the FBI–considered to be a competing and dangerous “gang,” since the “Feds,” had the power to end their criminal enterprises.

Now, that may simply be Mar-A-Blago speak, with Trump making the reckless, illegal and utterly bonkers bet that  his “fucking golden” tickets of classified national security documents—which he fraudulently claims are “his, not ours,”—are  his final “get out of jail free cards.”  

Maybe he’ll call his buddy Blagojevich to see how that worked out for him.  After all, Blago owes him one.

The Biden Administration is overlooking a perfectly good solution to the student loan forgiveness debate, coming to a head within the next week.

 As someone who did not pay off all of my student loans (including law school) until I was 50 years old, I know the burden of carrying that debt well into adulthood, as many loan recipients are still doing.

So, tune out the noise of the elitist Larry Summers and the inflation-doom sayers who favor keeping people saddled with debt for a lifetime.  In fact, it’s the height of chutzpah that Summers is opening his mouth on this issue, since as Harvard University President, he presided over steep private University tuition increases which fueled the student debt crisis.  He should have the decency to support a better solution.

 I think the more enlightened position is to consider cancelling debt as a direct action toward increasing wealth, not inflation.  In my own case, when I finally paid off the last of my student debt as the first person in my family’s history to attend college and graduate school, I immediately invested a similar amount into real estate, building our family’s wealth base for the first time ever—a family legacy and pool of wealth which we’ve grown over the past 20 years, after my college loans were paid. 

 My proposal is simple and straightforward, and based upon the highly successful National Teachers’ Corp model of 50 years ago:  exchanging education debt for public service.  This country is in desperate need of public school teachers, nurses, primary care physicians, and mental health professionals in virtually every community, especially following the COVID pandemic.   

Rather than tinkering at the edges of student debt by relieving a paltry $10,000 worth (most Black students carry a student debt burden of an average of $50,000, according to the NAACP), I propose wiping out student debt completely for anyone presently earning under $250,000, in exchange for performing public service like teaching for 2 years in a public school (with proper certification), working in a public hospital or performing some other essential public service.  

Such a barter of things of great value—clearly in the national interest—can be rolled out over a 10-year period, so individuals weighed down by school debt wouldn’t be forced to quit their current jobs immediately, and the federal government has time to finance and fine tune the program.

 Such a focus upon the urgency of bringing more qualified teachers, nurses, doctors, and mental health professionals into our public service is no less important than rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, or jump-starting an American MicroChip industry.  Such an influx of people into those essential public services from other professions (from Wall Street, law firms, hedge funds, engineering, computer programming, and all other fields)  will concentrate public attention and pressure upon increasing the historically low salaries of public school teachers, the salaries and working conditions of nurses and primary care doctors,  and of elevating those professions in the public’s eyes. With a teacher shortage crisis hitting us now, and teen suicide and mental health issues at record rates, why would we not make such an essential exchange?

 I’ve supported many of the Biden Administration’s initiatives over the past two years, which have rescued a plummeting economy, directed resources to small businesses, increased health care coverage for millions and kept many families afloat financially.  This solution is so self-evident, and firmly in the both the national interest and in the financial interest of individual families, that I don’t understand why the Biden Administration lacks vision here, is low-balling the solution, and only considering forgiveness of a small portion of undergraduate school debt.  The biggest debt burdens are from graduate and professional school expenses.  More than 20% of Americans are struggling to pay off existing education debt.  

I was determined to pay off my student loans-in-full and work in public service or public health.  Yet, my law school debt was “only” $18,000. The same professional JD degree costs 10 times that today.  With more than 20% of Americans struggling to pay off college debt, it’s time to come up with a creative solution that benefits them, and the nation.

On the 72^nd anniversary of the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly providing valuable, top-secret information to the Russians about nuclear weapons designs, radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines, the WashingtonPost  broke an explosive story headlined:  “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”

If true, the prospect of Trump selling highly classified nuclear documents to Vladimir Putin or the Saudis for billions of dollars and life-time asylum from US prosecution, adds an entirely new, and dangerous dimension, to the definition of Domestic Terrorism.  Especially, if the terrorist conducting nuclear blackmail, is an angry, aggrieved, ex-President, entrusted with the most sensitive life and death secrets imaginable.

 If the story was simply a “leak” by a patriotic FBI agent or DOJ employee intended to force Trump’s hand to release the detailed FBI affidavit revealing the crimes for which there was probable cause to search his home, Trump has been brilliantly outmaneuvered in an extraordinary high stakes game.    In order to prove that he hadn’t commoditized nuclear secrets to our enemies—a crime punishable by life imprisonment or execution, as the Rosenberg’s learned–Trump would have no choice but to release the documents.  Release of the sealed FBI search warrant, inventory documents and the affidavit—which can be like a lengthy indictment– threatens to strip bare the litany of crimes committed by Trump– serious enough to merit a court-ordered search of Mar-A-Lago.  It’s a lose/lose situation for Trump.

I devoured this five-alarm story from every media source I could find, when visions of Ethel Rosenberg, played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, began dancing on my brain.  Quickly, I ran to get my printed copy of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play.

I turned to the page where the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up at Roy Cohn’s bedside, as he lay dying of AIDS.  Cohn, who 20 years later would become Donald Trump’s personal attorney, had hounded Ethel and her husband Julius into electric-chair executions three years after her arrest .  

ETHEL:  They won, Roy.  You’re not a lawyer anymore.

ROY:  But am I dead?

ETHEL:  No.  They beat you.  You lost.

               (Pause)

ETHEL:

               I decided to come here so I could see if I could forgive you.   You who I have hated so terribly.  I have borne my hatred for you up into the heavens and made a needlesharp little star in the sky out of it.  It’s the star of Ethel Rosenberg’s Hatred, and it burns every year for one night only, June 19. (June 19, 1953, was the day Ethel and her husband Julius were executed.  Ethel had to be electrocuted three times before she finally died.)  It burns acid green.

            I came to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery.  Hoping I’d get to see you die more terrible than I did.  And you are, ‘cause you’re dying in shit, Roy, defeated.  And you could kill me, but you could never defeat me. You never won.  And when you die all anyone will say is:  better he had never lived at all.”

 We know from decades of evidence going back 50 years, when Trump and Roy Cohn  blocked Black families from moving into federally funded Trump-owned apartments in Brooklyn, that the ex-President is capable of unencumbered evil, as he proved again and again, with his calls for the death of the ultimately innocent Central Park Five, the fabrications over Barack Obama’s birth certificate and Mexicans storming the border, and the continuing Big Lie about the 2020 Election, and the incitement of people to violence on his behalf.

 The only President in all of American history to be twice impeached, Trump’s recklessness, and disregard for any order but his, and his breathtaking lawbreaking have surprised even those of us who have long pegged him as a criminal cipher and a con, and a mob-boss wannabe.  

Now, a calm, fearless Attorney General who brought the Oklahoma City Bomber to justice a generation ago, and lost family members to the lawlessness of Nazi Germany, has shown the world, that another totalitarian emperor has no clothes, and no where left to hide.

Maybe, the only eulogy that could be given for Trump’s 50-year temper tantrum in the public eye, is a variation on the theme expressed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, over Roy Cohn’s deathbed:  “Better he never had never lived a public life at all.”

COVID—this time the BA-5 variant, the most contagious of the five or so strains out there—has reminded us, once again, that it’s not ready to move on, just yet.  This week, this newest virus strain snuck up on Joe Biden and me, and tens of thousands of other folks.

Following five-days on Paxlovid, the anti-retroviral drug designed to moderate the virus and spare us severe symptoms, I’m coming out of my quarantine period feeling very strong, symptom-less and wearing my N-95 mask much more conscientiously.  Like lots of others, I let my guard down a bit, having been twice vaccinated and twice boosted—just as President Biden was.  I was feeling, kind of, invincible.

Fortunately—unlike the earlier killer-COVID strains that struck two years ago, emerging before vaccines, boosters and anti-retroviral drugs —we’re far better equipped today to handle this latest spike of a different sort, than we were for past variants.   Better, that is, IF we are double-vaxxed and boosted.

My last booster was administered in March, like Biden’s, and the four months between then and now, is the usual period when the boost begins to weaken. Unlike, Joe, I battled an earlier, more virulent strain of COVID in the Fall of 2021, before the first booster shots were available, which gave me a dry cough for days, and left me lethargic for more than a week.  This time around—thanks to two vaccinations, two boosters, and fairly regular masking (especially indoors and in public places), this COVID confrontation has felt no worse than a bout with post-nasal drip.

What astounds me, having battled the virus twice now—once before and after being boosted—is how clearly the boosters reduce the severity of the virus and the likelihood of hospitalization.  I find it incomprehensible that some 75% of Americans still refuseto take the boosters—choosing, instead to play Russian Roulette with their lives and the lives of the people they love.   Why is there even a question about coming up with a third, and fourth or more booster, if it’s going to help keep us healthy, reduce illness and save lives? Just because others don’t take it, is no reason to deny it to those of us who take our health, and the public’s health, seriously. 

Unlike President Biden, I have not done any foreign travel in a few years, and my only recent trip on public carriers was to NYC last month, when we avoided taking the subway and walked everywhere around Manhattan.  We started and ended that trip testing negative.

Like Joe, I still wore a mask in most crowded places—even outdoors– but was not as assiduous about it as my partner, Carol Villano, who—like Jill Biden, a fellow educator— also tested negative.  We differed on the kind of masks we wore: I was comfortable with a light blue surgical mask (since it was what our doctors made us put on before entering their offices); Carol, wisely, noted that the N-95 offered far more protection, even if it was more uncomfortable.  And, I’m the one who worked in public health for nearly 20 years.  Go figure. 

A few days after going to a crowded open-air concert in our town (when I stupidly let my mask down) I began to feel a sore throat, runny nose and slight headache.  We immediately took a home antigen test.  Carol tested negative, but my “Positive” line flashed bright.  

I immediately wanted a “second opinion”, and scurried to my Sutter Health facility in Santa Rosa, CA, where I was administered a PCR test.   The test confirmed my positive COVID status.

Like Biden, I’m over 70 years old, so my physician prescribed Paxlovid, instructing me to take the anti-retroviral drug for 5 days.   He asked me what prescription drugs I was taking.   

“Just Prosac and Viagra,” I said, assuming that most 70+ year old men took some combination of the two drugs.  

“You can keep taking the anti-depressants, “ he said,  “but cut out the Viagra while you’re on Paxlovid.” 

Yeeeesh, talk about a buzz kill.  (YES, some of us 70+ year old men, blessed with good health, still have sex, ride bicycles, walk or hike miles, and live a vigorous, love-filled life.)

I understood the smart, cautious medical reasoning behind not mixing contra-indicated meds.  In Viagra’s case, that miracle drug affected blood flow and heart rate, and could interfere with the effectiveness of Paxlovid, or worse.

The only side-effect I’ve experienced from taking Paxlovid this week was having a metallic-like taste in my mouth, which neither tomato sauce nor chocolate could erase for too long, but which tasty Thai food, and peppermint life-savers, didtemper.

Still, one week without Viagra—and without wine or alcohol– were small sacrifices when it came to knocking out COVID, one-more time.   Far bigger, but necessary, sacrifices, were staying isolated from my partner of 50 years, sleeping in separate beds, using separate bathroom, and eating meals in separate sections of the house.  Doing without hugging, or kissing, or touching, were the toughest precautions to take, to protect those we love from COVID.

I’ve always hated July 4th since I was a working–class kid growing up in North Babylon, Long Island.  That was a lifetime ago, decades before 4Chan existed, “Mass Murder Websites” had followers, and Assault Weapons were as easy to buy as fireworks. 

My father, a tough guy from Brooklyn and a newcomer to the suburbs at 40 years old, despised the Fourth of July, hated driving a car—a suburban necessity– BBQing, mowing the lawn, or hosing down the driveway each night, the way every single one of our mostly Italian neighbors did.   To him, it was all a stupid, empty waste of time.

We never hung the American Flag up in front of our house, even though my father fought the Fascists in WWII, and bore tattoos from the War burned into his arms.   Patriotism, like religion, was something we just didn’t flaunt.

“I ain’t no holy roller,” my father would proclaim.  He hated “mosses”, an Italian-phrase he butchered, meaning that he despised making a big deal about anything.

Our “fireworks” celebrations were always understated, consisting mostly of lighting sparklers in our small back yard with my cousins from the City, who came out to the “country” to visit us each year on the Fourth. The rest of the “holiday”— a bombastic celebration of militarism– was simply a paid day off from work for working stiffs like my father.

Although I couldn’t yet fully comprehend peoples’ obsession with fireworks,  I illegally sold them one year. To me, it was absurd that people would pay virtually anything to literally set their money on fire.    

My older brother, Vinnie—shrewd and savvy in the ways of the world– brought home “mats” of firecrackers, loose cherry bombs, bottle rockets, and exploding “ashcans” that could blow off your hand.  I was his underage “dealer”, selling the stuff to any of my friends who would buy them.  In our working class neighborhood on the North Babylon/Deer Park border, setting off fireworks was a defiant pleasure which made some feel far more powerful than they ever imagined they could.   Back then, in the 1950’s and 60’s, assault weapons were only used in war zones around the world.  Otherwise, only the police, and criminals & mobsters had guns.

For a poor kid who sold my toys and comic books to have spending money in the summertime, my brother opened my eyes to the serious money I could make by selling fireworks.    As July 4th approached in the Year I Lived Dangerously, sales were so outrageously brisk that my schoolmates were running up the block, waving $20 bills in their fists for any scrap of fireworks I had left. 

The cherry-bomb clamoring crowd grew so noisy on our front steps, that our next door neighbor threatened to call the cops and report us. I went to sleep with several gross of firecrackers under my bed, worried that either the police were going to raid us, or our house would catch fire, and light up like a rocket in the night.  

 “Controlled” fireworks displays—or controlled anything for that matter– were not part of our consciousness. Our lives were completely out of control. Chaos reigned. Money, or lack of it, ruled.  We wanted to exercise some power—to show we existed— and fireworks were an easy way to do it, and a quick way to make a buck.  Also, we rationalized, they weren’t drugs or guns.

This week’s mass murder at the July 4th celebration in Highland Park, Illinois—a wealthy, mostly Jewish-suburb 25 miles north of Chicago—has brought all of those mangled memories rushing back to me.  If only I had protested louder and sooner about how stupid I thought July 4th celebrations and fireworks displays were, maybe some lives could have been saved.  If only I hadn’t sold fireworks; if only, if only, there were national traditions far different from military parades and simulated  bombs in the sky.  If only there were no weapons of mass destruction in civilian hands, that ripped the bodies of babies to shreds.   If only it poured heavy rain that day, or people stayed home and read books to their kids, or went swimming or binge watched something on Netflix or Disney or HBO… if only, if only, if only…

It took me more than 50 years to speak out against such July 4th foolishness.  We were living a long, long way from North Babylon, in the northern Napa County town of St. Helena, California, a wealthy town experiencing a devastating drought.  Fire warning levels were “extremely” high; water rationing was mandatory. Only the rich, enamored as they are with controlling everything, still wanted controlled fireworks displays. The rest of us thought any  fireworks were far too high a fire risk, unnecessary, and a grotesque waste of money.  

But, some wine country benefactor was willing to bankroll the entire $50,000 cost of a “controlled” fireworks display to make sure that July 4th was a “patriotic” celebration—despite the rampant risk of fire, and reams of research that demonstrated fireworks displays triggered PTSD episodes in Veterans who have fought in wartime.  Right down the road from us in Yountville, was the largest Veterans Facility in the State of California.  None of that mattered.  The fireworks show must go on.   How else could they boast that this year’s fireworks display was better than last?  How else could patriotism be powerfully demonstrated?

At virtually the very same moment that wealthy fireworks fans forked over private funds to pay for their patriotism, St. Helena City officials cut nearly $250,000 of public funds from the budget of its’ terrific local public library.   The full-time Library Director was fired, and the City Council reduced the hours the Library was open to the public, including a complete shutdown on Sundays.  Some things just didn’t matter as much to the rich as flashy fireworks displays.

Money spent on fireworks isn’t spent on books.  I know. I saw it in the eyes of my North Babylon friends throwing money at me for fireworks 60 years ago. If books could have given them the same sense of power, and the same kind of buzz, they’d have burned them too. 

I thought of this peculiar American absurdity of lighting money up into smoke, and feeling powerful from fireworks and mock-military parades on “Independence Day” this year, when American democratic freedoms and individual rights are in grave peril–especially the right to vote; a woman’s right to make health care decisions about her own body; and the right of every child already born to live a healthy, full life, free from the threat of gun violence.

The latest American Killing Field coming during a July 4th celebration in Highland Park—a friendly, Mid-Western city which welcomed Jews cast out by the rest of the world after World War II– should inscribe a message in blood upon all of our doorposts:  humanity matters far more than guns or power or politics or parades.   Forget fireworks; protecting real, existing, human life is the ultimate act of patriotism.