Out-of-work plastic surgeons a hazard

I've read that elective plastic surgery has taken a big hit during this recession, but I didn't realize that the surgeons have resorted to trolling for work in their old specialties. The problem is, they may no longer be as current as they should be. I have to have a haywire gland (a parathyroid) removed from my neck. The hospital directed me to their ear, nose and throat surgeon. But even as he was giving me the surgeon's name, the medical director said I might want to get a second opinion -- and he offered the name of a second ENT surgeon. I thought, "Whoa, that's weird."

So, I checked out the doctors on New York State's physician website, and I found that the first doctor described his practice entirely in terms of facial plastic surgery. He didn't even mention ENT work. So, I asked if he did the minimally invasive type of surgery I was looking for. He told me he did not, and then started talking on and on about the different types of scars. Again, a red flag went up for me. This guy was all about the surface.

I made some more calls and discovered that the second ENT surgeon doesn't accept my insurance. So, I ended up finding a third surgeon, one who has devoted himself to this kind of operation, both as a student and now in his specialty practice. I'm not very happy with the hospital staff who, essentially, threw me to my own resources. I'm sure there are rules and professional courtesies involved about who gets a referral, but I can't see where this process has the patient's best interests at heart.

Two days later, the first ENT called me to schedule the surgery. I told him that I had chosen someone else who offered the newer technique. For one thing, it means the difference between going under general anaesthesia or having a local pain blocker. "It's all marketing!" he practically shouted into the phone. When I argued with him, he offered to repeat what he had just explained to me, "but this time very slowly." Charming.

I have to think there was karma at work here.

Poll: Paterson should stay on

It's official: Even with all the hijinks issuing from the Governor's Mansion, 68 percent of registered voters in New York want Gov. David Paterson to fill out his term, which lasts through the end of this year. I think this poll result speaks to how jaded we New Yorkers are. The Gray Lady and the city tabloids can harumph all they want about recent allegations -- that the governor covered up for a girlfriend-beating aide, that he asked the Yankees for free tickets to the World Series, that he steered a big state contract into the arms of his political supporters. This is all kid stuff for New Yorkers.

We want to see him deal with a really big job: closing a deal on a state budget that's $9 billion in the red.

A smarter strategy on gay marriage

Prominent gay activist Ethan Geto told New York magazine that if the NY Senate Democrats don't bring same-sex marriage to a vote, there will be "hell to pay. The gay community is going to walk away en masse." Of course, having them walk away one-by-one is what the Senate is trying to prevent by stalling a vote. That is, if senators are forced to vote, they will put themselves on the record, and gay activists will divide them into two groups for the fall 2010 elections. Supporters will receive cash donations -- and the opponents, who knows? Activist organization Empire State Pride Agenda has not revealed its strategies to target opponents next year -- at least not in public.

Few senators will even say where they stand on gay marriage, for fear of putting themselves in the sights of one side or the other. The Catholic Church holds a lot of power on Long Island. ESPA, Geto and others want a floor vote in the Senate, so they can count their friends. That's ironic, isn't it? Gay advocates trying to "out" New York's elected officials.

Rather than taking a vote of conscience, Senate Democrats would apparently prefer to protect their jobs. Talk about unconscionable. People in public life should be prepared to say what they believe.

Geto's statement today ups the ante by threatening to work against the entire Democratic caucus if they don't hold a vote -- or maybe just the leadership that prevents the vote from coming to the floor. It's a potentially successful new tactic. Will it work? Stay tuned.

Flexible work: Twenty years of progress lost

In July, a Congressional committee, the Joint Economic Committee, heard from work-home experts about the disappearance of flexible work arrangements – a hazard of the economic recession. Cynthia Thomas Calvert, deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California said callers to the center “unanimously expressed their needs for flexibility and feelings of near desperation at facing unemployment because of their inability to work a standard schedule.” Calvert went on to say that employers may be using the recession as an excuse to terminate family caregivers. Between January 2008 and July 2009, the center had heard from 45 women who were fired shortly before, during or shortly after their pregnancies. In many cases, supervisors had expressed doubt about their ability to combine work and family.

Thirty percent of working moms, whose companies have had layoffs in the past 12 months, are working longer hours, according to CareerBuilder’s annual Mother’s Day survey taken in 2009. Fourteen percent or working moms had taken on second jobs in the past year.

In good times, workers frequently seized the opportunity to use “flex time” and family leave, to telecommute and to take paid sick days. But the recession has brought with it a "silent fright" among workers, Joanne Brundage told the Washington Post in March. The executive director of a mothers’ networking group, Mothers & More, Brundage said the current mindset is to "work as many hours as you can. Make yourself indispensable. Don’t ever complain. Don’t ever ask for anything. I’m just horrified. We may as well just forget the last 20 years.”

Joblessness, despair and a way out

I just finished listening to a podcast of Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." I picked it up because several people I interviewed for my stories on long-term unemployment told me they had read it -- often with a hint that it had helped them overcome despair. It's a very difficult book to read because it begins with the horrific tale of Frankl's three years in Nazi concentration camps. I've actually tried to read it twice before and put it down. The podcast turned out to be a good option for me because it kept me listening. I had several "aha" moments learning about Frankl's ideas. Human anxiety can often be traced back to difficulties in knowing what gives our lives meaning, he says, a theory he developed into a full school of psychiatry called logotherapy. Frankl describes three paths to meaning in life. One is through doing -- finding meaning in creativity and work. The second is through experiencing, either love or art or natural beauty. The third is by being tested through suffering -- unavoidable suffering -- and keeping hold of one's dignity and humanity.

The long-term unemployed people I spoke with were clearly referring to finding meaning through suffering. Frankl discusses the depressing effects of job loss in a couple of places. I got the sense that reading Frankl's book had kept some of the people I met from committing suicide.

I marvel that our society treats unemployment so lightly when it has this sort of consequence for the people who go through it. The business world has fully embraced layoffs over the last couple of decades. It seems like a tragic direction.

'Gang of Three' split over same-sex marriage

People who are counting heads in the New York State Senate say that a vote to legalize same-sex marriage will be very close -- if the bill makes it to the floor at all. The issue was nearly considered last spring, just before the Senate Republican coup knocked all agendas off the table. Now, advocates led by the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA) are prepping for a Nov. 10 special session of the legislature to try again. As I've said before, the vote could fill an important political need for Gov. David Paterson and anyone who wants to see him step aside in 2010, such as Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

ESPA won't say who among the state senators it is counting on its side. But two sources say that troubled Sen. Hiram Monserrate's name is in ESPA's "yes" column.

Monserrate -- a member of the senate's so-called "Gang of Three" rogue members -- hasn't said much publicly since a Queens judge concluded he was guilty of a violent misdemeanor assault on his girlfriend, and political folks began calling for his ouster. One of the people who rushed to Monserrate's rescue is Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr., a minister who is practically a single-issue voter on the subject of same-sex marriage. He based his support for former Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith on a reported promise Smith made to block a marriage bill from coming to the senate floor.

The recent dynamics would appear to at least shift Monserrate's vote to the questionable column. Joshua Meltzer, an ESPA spokesman, says that although he can't talk about the senator's position, he would point to Sen. Pedro Espada as another 'Gang' member who has gone his own way to co-sponsor the marriage bill in the senate.

But I'm predicting that Monserrate will vote with Diaz in the end. With a special senate committee considering his fate, Monserrate is going to need every friend he can get on the inside.

Anti-abortioners get them while they're young

My daughters came home from a street fair near our home with this "cute rubber baby" -- given to them by an anti-abortion group that had set up a table at the fair. The trouble is, my daughters are 12 and 10. These activists apparently pulled them aside -- or maybe just lured them over with rubber babies and pencils -- and talked to them about abortion without their parents present.

My girls came home and asked me what abortion is. The activists had told them something about "ripping up a baby" in the womb. I answered the question -- I believe in giving my kids good information when they're curious, along a healthy dose of spin about our family's beliefs. But I resented this group for introducing my kids to this issue too young and framing it with their bias.

It's not that we don't talk about sexuality and reproduction at home. Their dad and I have explained the facts of life and the dangers of becoming pregnant as a consequence of having sex. We've taken every opportunity to teach them to respect their bodies -- by eating well, by not lifting their shirts for second-grade boys on the school bus.

But what happened to my rights as a parent to teach them about life and morality at my own pace? These anti-abortion folks, as usual, seem to care more for the life of some hypothetical baby than for the innocence of the two young girls standing in front of them.

I've heard that some 10-year-olds can be very mature and even sexually active. But mine simply are not. They carried the rubber babies around for the rest of the weekend, talking about how cute they are, and made them a place to sleep in their dollhouse.

This rubber baby was supplied by heritagehouse76.org, an online warehouse supplying any number of items to the anti-abortion movement. The company was founded by Virginia and Ellis Evers, activists who began using silhouettes of tiny baby feet on lapel buttons in the 1970s to further their cause. The rubber babies must have come later. You can order them in several different models and three "ethnicities." (White baby shown above.) The people at the street fair also gave my daughters a pencil with a silhouette -- which is the size of a 10-week-old baby's feet.

Fortunately, the other side was represented at the fair too. My kids also came home with bright pink lapel pins stating, "My body is not public property." These came from the American Civil Liberties Union. My 10-year-old read the pin out loud to me, and I responded, "That's right. Your body is not public property." Especially not for some anti-abortion fanatic at a street fair trying to indoctrinate little girls before their time.

Gay marriage as farewell

Gov. David Paterson's newfound energy to pass a same-sex marriage bill may look like a political resurgence. But in reality, it could serve as one of the final acts of his governorship. Since the Obama White House apparently conveyed its desire in mid-September that Paterson not run for governor in 2010, some Democrats have been searching for legacy accomplishments that would give Paterson a graceful exit.

Permitting gay marriage in New York is perfectly on point for this governor, considering his socially progressive past as the State Senate Minority Leader. He championed same-sex marriage then. Passing this legislation would restore New York, somewhat, to its glory days as a leader in social causes. Six other states have already passed similar measures. Seventh isn't first -- but it's better than never.

State Senate Democrats, in particular, have criticized Paterson for abandoning his progressive roots when he rose to governor. This legislation would help heal that fissure and begin writing a positive legacy for the governor.

My kids' homework changed my life

I'm working on a book that observes the balancing choices today's parents make between home and work. I used to be at one end of the spectrum, when my kids entered grade school, when it came to homework. Their teachers were telling me that this was work they should be able to accomplish on their own, and so I left them to it. But as I stand here today, with daughters in 5th and 7th grades, I am at the other far end of the homework spectrum. It all happened so gradually, so innocently....

I used to go out at night after work. I wasn't just hanging out with friends. I was a reporter new to NYC political circles, and I felt that it was important to get to know people so I could be plugged into what they were thinking and doing. It was also marvelous fun. New York is filled with fascinating characters who love to tell the story of politics as they know it -- both present and recent past. I had a professor in journalism school who used to say that you could walk down the streets of NY and pick up stories off the sidewalk, they were so plentiful. That's how the city in 2003 felt to me.

So, I was out two or three nights a week. But then I noticed that my older daughter wasn't doing so well in school. I thought, perhaps average is her best work. Maybe she's just not a student. But I began coming home more often at night to work with her, starting in about 3rd or 4th grade. It must have been helping, because soon I began to feel a tug in my chest every time I tried to go out and meet my political friends at an event. I became almost physically unable to stay away from home at night. I think other parents will know what I'm talking about.

At the time, I had this big, bald friend named Ray (hi, Ray) who would urge me to attend the events. "You have to get out and listen to what people are saying when they've had a couple of drinks," he told me. Constantly. He was saying this to me two or three times a week. I just couldn't do it. I tried meeting people for breakfast or lunch instead, which worked well enough. It was very hard when I considered that I might not be giving my very best to a job I loved.

Originally, I thought my daughter would need a year's worth of extra help from me, maybe 18 months. Then she would be on the right track. But she's in 7th grade now, and I'm still waiting to feel as if I can jet out on my own at night. It's not even that she needs me so much now. She has made an amazing transformation. She's serious about her work and so far this year has earned all A's (with just one C on an English paper. We'll do better next time!). I have to believe that my "sacrifice" helped her get here. But now her little sister needs the same focused attention from me and her dad. Our nights these days are turned over to homework, no questions asked.

I've even taken a more family-friendly job, and I no longer talk to Ray much. I've heard many of my friends' political tales many times over. But I miss that scene and wonder if I will ever get that kind of a kick from my work again.

NY Democrats' binary choice for governor

Nearly 72 percent of NY voters in a Siena Poll published this week said that they would prefer "someone else" in 2010 for governor over Gov. David Paterson. But people involved in politics in NY almost never ask themselves the question that way. They ask themselves, "Do I want David Paterson? Or do I want Andrew Cuomo?" At least for now, that's how the choice seems to break down. As attorney general, Cuomo has taken on so many high-profile battles -- and has even won a few -- that he's approaching that gold standard of politics: inevitability.

As NY Democrats try to decide who to support for governor -- a decision that will become more urgent after Election Day on Nov. 3 -- they're watching both men closely. Paterson met with his advisers on a recent Monday night, Oct. 12. They told him that the people close to him understand his strengths as a leader -- intelligence, consensus-building, fine oratorical skills -- but that the ectorate has not yet seen the real David Paterson. The way he ascended to the post, without a long race during which the public could vet him, is partly to blame. So is the global economic melt-down. With his approval rating at 19 percent, the advisers probably didn't have to work too hard to convince him to try something different.

Two days after that meeting, Paterson announced a plan to take on the $3 billion budget deficit. He has been aggressively making the rounds of radio and television shows to demonstrate his leadership. His appearance on NY1 this week was particularly memorable, as he berated "Saturday Night Live" for portraying him as a bumbler.

Many Democrats are rooting for Paterson behind the scenes. He's a "nice guy," but his ability to follow through with initiatives remains in question. In that sense, this recent call to cut the budget is a significant test, as is his proposal today to bring the issue of gay marriage to a vote by the end of the year.

"Nice guy" are not the first words people use to describe Andrew Cuomo. Many remember him as a campaign "enforcer" during the years his father, Mario Cuomo, was governor. I moved to NY in 2003 and did not personally witness those days. What I see now is an attorney general making good on campaign promises to clean up government. But he also pulls no punches with other leading Democrats who might be considered rivals -- or distractions on the march toward inevitability? -- people such as Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi and State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

Is Cuomo's hard-charging style evidence that the enforcer lives beneath the surface? Time will tell.

Looking the other way on job loss

It shocks me that the media has focused so little on joblessness in America. Having weathered it repeatedly with my husband, I know how emotionally difficult job loss can be. My newspaper ran a cartoon this week on the op-ed page that depicted a man who had lost everything in the recent market crash -- including his job and his wife. The implications of this are startling, but I think as a country we are in denial. Job loss is busting up marriages. On the road to that bust-up you'll find the potential for domestic violence, suicide, drugging and drinking to check out of reality. How does no one get this? No one but the people going through it, that is. I read the startling numbers month after month: 263,000 jobs lost in September, for example. The figures are staggering, and mind-numbing. What's worse is the duration: 35.6 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for 27 months or longer. It's not so hard to handle four or six months out of work. But more than two years? A person's self-worth really starts to erode.

I'm surprised that social conservatives -- those who champion families and marriage -- aren't more vocal about these issues.

Each week, as I listen to the big network talk shows, the topics are Afghanistan and health care, Afghanistan and health care. Enough already! The media is hyper-focused on these issues because they are apparently what is occupying President Obama and Congress. A lone exception last week was "Bill Moyers Journal," which interviewed Toledo Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. She has gone so far as to charge the big banking interests with staging a coup d'etat in America. She claims they have taken over the government, and she urges people to squat in their own homes, rather than allow them to be taken in forecolsures.

So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? In Ohio it is going to be 10 or 20 below zero. Don't leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don't have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can't find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.

Isn't that just great? I wish I could vote for this woman.

Lost in suburbia

I recently visited my dentist. As I was walking down the hall, the receptionist asked if I'd like a magazine and suggested I choose something from the left-hand side where "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Home and Garden" were displayed. The other tier contained magazines about "politics and business -- boring stuff," she assured me. I considered saying something quippy about how I have been writing about politics and business for 20 years and don't consider it at all boring. I used to speak up more when I was younger, just to shake up people's perceptions. I look like what I am: a 40-something suburban mom. But that doesn't mean mommy and political junkie can't exist in the same person.

My quips have not succeeded in educating the world, however, and some days I choose to stop trying. The tide keeps coming back in to wash away my sand castles.

Also, I realize that the receptionist was trying to be nice -- something I appreaciate more now than at a younger time. She wasn't trying to make me feel alienated and freakish, even if that was the result.

It's been about 18 months since I stopped commuting from suburban Long Island into Manhattan. I miss it. Now it's suburbia for both home and work. All suburban, all the time.

Now Charlie Rangel plays the race card

It's being reported today by Fox News that Rep. Charlie Rangel says "bias" and "prejudice" toward President Barack Obama is fueling opposition to health-care reform. I have no doubt that many of the same people who had hard feelings about Sen. Obama because of his race prior to the election still feel that way -- and they could be using the health-care debate as an opportunity to attack him. But portraying the opposition in simplistic racial terms stifles honest debate. With so many years in public life, Rangel ought to know better -- as should Gov. David Paterson, who made a similar statement last week. Here's what Rangel, the dean of the New York delegation, had to say:

"Some Americans have not gotten over the fact that Obama is president of the United States. They go to sleep wondering, 'How did this happen?' " Rangel (D-Manhattan) said Tuesday.

Speaking at a health-care forum in Washington Heights, Rangel said that when critics complain that Obama is "trying to interfere" with their lives by pushing for health-care reform, "then you know there's just a misunderstanding, a bias, a prejudice, an emotional feeling."

First of all, every president has detractors. No one is elected with 100 percent of the population voting for him. And the people who "lost" the presidential election always wait in the wings for a moment to pounce. It's been that way for as many presidential terms as I've witnessed. Calling it race prejudice doesn't make it so. Obama's detractors are motivated by many reasons, and just one of them is racial.

The other thing that bothers me is that now anyone who speaks out against health-care reform is presumably a racist, if we are to take Rangel's statement to its logical conclusion. Of course Rangel can't believe that. But people with a valid opposition to the president's plans may feel tarred by that brush for speaking up. What kind of way is that to run an important national discussion? Likewise, when Gov. Paterson accuses "some in the news media" of portraying him in a biased way, isn't he essentially telling them to shut up?

I remember when New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn -- an openly gay politician -- was first elected. I like and admire Quinn, but I also think she revels in being a very sharp political player. She cuts deals. Because I thought that was her calling card, I sometimes wrote about her that way.

One morning I received a call from one of her aides questioning my judgment. "You write about her in a way you don't write about anyone else," the aide said. I felt at that moment that I was being called a homophobe -- although Quinn's political moves, not her orientation, was what interested me. After that, I tried to avoid the issue altogether by writing about her less. But I don't think that served anyone well -- not me, and not Quinn, who after all is in politics. Politicians like attention.

I'm not sure it ever serves a debate well to question the other side's motivation. Although, it is a thriving practice in modern America.

The lure of money for nothing

My dad lost some of his retirement money in the past year's market crash -- which I hope is now behind us, but I'm as much in the dark as anyone. I was silently critical of him, at first, when he told me about his situation. He had left money in stocks -- probably too much for his age (77) and what the financial advisers call his tolerance for risk. After his loss, he moved more money into bonds. He kept some in stocks to try to capture the "upside" -- more investment jargon -- as the economy recovers. But I would soon discover more sympathy for my dad's investment strategy.

Our college savings eroded last year too, even though it was in a slow-growing fund. I was looking at the numbers online last week and wondering why we seemed to have the worst of both worlds: neither the security of bond investments, nor the growth of stocks. I should say here that we have two of those 529 plans -- one for each daughter -- which are run (in most cases, I think) by the chief financial officers of the states where they're available. So, I hadn't had much involvement with choosing where the money was invested, beyond typing in my daughters' expected dates of graduation, 2015 and 2017, and then crossing my fingers and hoping the money will be there. But as I was tooling around on the 529 site, I looked at the range of investment options. One aggressive fund is paying much better than the two I had. So, I moved the money. I can't even believe I'm admitting this -- I am so not a gambler, especially with precious dollars we're setting aside for our kids' future. I was nervous, but not so nervous that it stopped me. I kept thinking about how we're just paying our bills every month, just kind of matching the income and out-go. We're making sacrifices here and there -- cutting down on dinners out and music lessons in the summer. Why should I let this investment fund rob us of what amount we're able to set aside? As I see it, my savings were far worse off than if I had tucked them into a shoebox and stuck it in the back of the closet.

I wanted to risk a little reward.

So far, the new investment is working. I haven't quite recovered our losses, but almost. I'm checking the numbers daily, and it's kind of fun to feel that I've made a good decision, and to look forward to a better total tomorrow. It's addictive. You might say I'm hooked.

So, now I'm telling myself that I'll leave the money in the aggressive fund just until I cover our losses. I guess I'm betting that the world economy has bottomed out.

Anxious all the time

This economy is making me anxious all the time. It doesn't seem as though it should -- my husband and I are two of the lucky ones who have jobs, and our employers seem to be doing OK. No, it's not really my personal situation that has me anxious. It seems like something in the air. First of all, the sheer number of people laid off is astounding -- 663,000 people lost jobs in March alone, and 3.3 million since October. Those are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, so they're probably an under-count. The BLS tends to miss informal work arrangements, people who are discouraged and have stopped looking for work, those who would work more hours if they could, and people who used to have higher-paying jobs.

Every time I think of that number -- 663,000 -- I try to picture all of those people out of work. I really can't. First I come up with a vague image of a tractor rusting in a Midwestern field. Then I picture empty Long Island Rail Road seats as Wall Streeters stay home instead of commuting into NYC. And then I think of how hard it is to be home when you want to work, how much tension it creates.

The other cause of my anxiety is that I feel poorer because of what has happened to my retirement and college savings. We are still shoveling money into these funds, and I have no idea whether that's a foolish thing or not. One theory is that we are "buying low" right now. But is my 401(k) administrator really purchasing stocks? The last time I looked, much of the money had been shifted into bonds. Doesn't this mean that I have "locked in my losses?" I know that I should be more diligent, and maybe take over control of this account myself. But I really don't have any expertise in that. I just signed up to be a journalist in this life. Now, I'm supposed to be picking stocks? Or what? No retirement for me! It's overwhelming.

I can't even get into the college savings stuff. Each of my daughters' accounts has lost about $3,000. What happened to the "magic of compound interest" theory that I was raised on? It's not there any more! There is no more magic. I keep wondering how much debt I will be saddling my children with -- and here's the really crazy part. They are both still in grade school.

Like I said, this anxiety thing is insidious.

Editorial: New York's disaster plan

Budget, the height of irresponsibility, shows need for real leaders in Albany

Asked last fall whether he would raise business or income taxes, Gov. David A. Paterson  had this to say: "We have ruled that out, myself and all of the leaders of the legislature, for the period this year and the budget process next year. What we want to do is cut our out-of-control spending."

It is with a sense of betrayal, then, that we regard this year's budget of $131.8 billion, an 8 percent increase that imposes $7 billion in new taxes and fees. This editorial page cheered the governor many times for his commitment to reduce spending to match revenue - reversing a years-long trend in Albany of borrowing to overspend. We believed him, and we were wrong.

Instead of preparing the state to thrive once the recession lifts, Paterson and the other Albany leaders - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Majority Leader Malcolm Smith - badly fumbled this opportunity. They ignored that the Wall Street engine will not likely return to its former revenue-generating status. The three leaders - do they deserve the title? - are predicting that the hole blown in state revenue by the national economic crisis will grow another $3 billion to $4 billion by year's end, yet this budget does nothing to prepare for it. Indeed, we wonder if it can be legally certified, given the requirement that New York's budget be balanced.

Specifically, Albany did nothing to reform schools, one of the two biggest spending items. And in health care, the other, leaders missed the opportunity to use the federal stimulus money to create an adequate cushion for Medicaid reforms.

The spending has exposed Silver, whose vast majority in the Assembly makes him unaccountable at the ballot box, as a big-budgeter friend of public-employee unions. The speaker took advantage of Smith's inexperience and Paterson's ineptitude. He has truly established himself as the King of New York.

Long Island's two Democratic senators, Craig Johnson of Port Washington and Brian Foley of Blue Point, have an opportunity here to be the real leaders by halting this budget. In their chamber, one vote does mean something, and they should use theirs to stand up for responsible government. Voters will hold them accountable for their decisions on this fraudulent plan.

Some of the spending increases are beyond unconscionable, given the state of the economy. Examples include:

Member items, at a cost of $170 million, serve as payoffs politicians use to boost their popularity. The money will go to many groups that have nothing to do with social-service spending, where Paterson says it's aimed: the Greater Long Island Running Club, the Pat-Med Youth Football and Cheerleading Club, the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum.

New taxes on vehicles, just as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board has voted to jack up bus and train fares by at least 25 percent and cut services. This budget imposes motor vehicle registration fee hikes, surcharges on auto insurance policies and increases in driver's license fees.

Regressive increases on utilities ($557 million), health-maintenance organizations ($107 million) and health insurance companies ($5 million). These will be passed along to consumers - regardless of their ability to pay - in higher utility bills and costlier health care.

Paterson has talked for many months about Depression-era hardships. But when the time came to make good on his word, he couldn't do it. Governing now requires far more steel than that.

—Newsday, April 1, 2009

Working more: the legacy of layoffs

I apologize for being absent. The truth is that I am writing another blog, one that is work-related. And the reason is that the blogger before me was laid off. So, now I'm doing my old job plus hers. Those of us who remain at work after the "downsizing" often work much harder. I'm not working so many more hours -- maybe a few more -- so much as that my mental capacity is drained for anything outside of work. I spend several hours a day burning the battery on high wattage. And when I come home, there's very little left. I'm putting most of what's left toward making sure my kids are on track -- school papers signed, tests prepared for, etc. Seeing them happy gives me a lot of pleasure.

If the women of the 19th century and earlier were often too burdened with housework and field work to write, maybe we women of the 21st century are the same, only bound by a different sort of work. I had always dreamed of hours and energy enough to write something really good. Now I feel that this will happen only if/when I retire. And by then, I might not be up to it. Who knows?

I'm sorry to be self-pitying. These thoughts make me very sad.

Doubting the breadwinner

Today, I read this very honest essay from a woman whose live-in boyfriend has been laid off. He's pursuing his "big dreams" and living on his severance -- while she's wondering if he's ever going to bring in a paycheck again. She's trying not to be "ugly," while at the same time revisiting her hopes for a house and kids some day. The writer, Esther Martinez, concludes:

I hope our relationship makes it through this recession. I wonder how many won't. My boyfriend's layoff has stirred up scary notions about love - that it really might be conditional, and that the conditions are not always pretty.

My first reaction was admiration for Ms. Martinez for her courage in exposing her feelings like this. I remember being so ashamed about how much of my regard for my husband was tied to his bread-winning. Of course, we weren't just dreaming about kids when his joblessness started, we had a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old, as well as a mortgage. So, perhaps I can be forgiven for my anxiety over how we were going to hold this house of cards together. I was freelancing at the time, and shortly went back to full-time work. But my salary didn't come close to covering our expenses.

My second reaction to the Martinez essay was how hard it is to convey these fears to people who have not been through it. I will sometimes tell people that many "social ills" can arise because of a layoff. But that's a euphemistic mask I'm placing over what we went through. Ms. Martinez says it better. By social ills, I mean to hint at domestic violence, divorce, substance abuse, depression, suicide, crime. Those things seemed a lot more possible during the layoffs. A middle-class, Catholic, law-abider, I had never expected the wings of those problems to brush me.

I wasn't the only one who assumed my husband's status as a spouse was diminished, though. I told one man that Dan had just been laid off for a second time, and this man seemed to view it as a come-on, and as an invitation to move in and pursue me. I guess he thought that if my husband wasn't fulfilling his bread-winner duties that we would soon be divorced. Those assumptions run deep in American culture.

I consume, therefore I am

It shocks me how the imperative to consume is worming its way into our intellectual life in America. When I first observed it, I laughed and thought it was passing. I suppose that's how every insidious idea begins. As I watch the discussion now about how to "stimulate" America into better economic health -- a defibrillator metaphor, it seems -- many of our smartest commentators seem to assume that what will lead to long-term health is Americans spending our very last dime. Here's the New York Times' editorial board today, writing about President-elect Barack Obama's economic agenda:

That argument starts with the correct premise that a stalled economy needs all the juice it can get, hence the need for the roughly $800 billion recovery package to spur consumption and create jobs, taking shape in Congress and championed by Mr. Obama.

The need to "spur consumption" is so assumed by these writers that it doesn't even bear explaining. The American economy runs on consumption, I guess, like America runs on Dunkin'. Nobody is questioning the premise that we need to spend in order to maintain the health of our economy.

And here is the New Yorker in "Talk of The Town" this past week, written by Adam Gopnik, with a similarly embedded value that consumption is good:

Consumers have stopped consuming, the papers say, for the same reason that the child has decided to cry: I’m really damaged, we want the world to know; attention must be paid.

As though we, as Americans, don't have a right to be royally pissed off that our retirement and college savings have declined precipitously along with the hogwash that is the investment banking business-as-usual -- a high-risk gambit with the Big Hamptons Home in sight.

So, we American consumers want to save a little money now, as a hedge toward the future, and Mr. Gopnik believes that we are crying babies. If I'm reading Mr. Gopnik's essay correctly, he is attempting to convey to us uninitiated masses that economics is an emotional venture, as well as a social science. It's lovely of him to explain this to us, and I do applaud it as a student of economics myself, who has understood this concept all along. But then, would it not also make sense that we consumers here in America would react to tough economic times, emotionally, by socking a little something under the mattress? This could be expected. And it could be accommodated in econometric models. Disatrous times = people getting frightened and stashing money away. Don't begin to tell me that this is irrational, or worse, unpatriotic.

Which leads us, of course, to the very worst of the worst pleas for Americans to act as consumers, as opposed to something larger. It was the call by President George W. Bush for us to "spend money" as a way to respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. We women know what it is to be objectified -- to be wanted for our bodies or our body parts. Imagine the leader of the Free World calling on Americans to respond to the murder of nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens by advising a shopping trip to K-Mart. Lost is any sense of what we are as humans.

I admit that this Sept. 11 complaint is a long-ago irritation by now. I assumed that, in the interim, it had been identified and observed as completely insane; but now I see that the New York Times and the New Yorker are echoing Mr. Bush's views that we are consumers first, consumers uber alles. Second, maybe we will have to send our sons and daughters to be killed in Iraq.

It's insanity, in the George Orwell "1984" sense, to believe that "consumption" can make us what we need to be. I can get behind railroads buying American steel. But I can't think that I have to have a dazzling new blouse at work every week for our economy to remain vibrant. It's not that I believe that our economy is not organized to need continuous injections of consumer dollars. It may be. It's that I think that it's wrong to set us on a treadmill where everything we own must be new or "the latest" for us to survive as a nation.

When I lived in Togo, in West Africa, people owned so much less. They had one or two sets of clothes. And yet they knew how to find happiness, perhaps in a way that we have forgotten here. Their happiness was based on family and community. Granted, it's an easier task to be happy when the goal is simply survival, not superlative success, as it has become in the U.S., and especially in New York.

I wish that we could use this economic crisis to re-evaluate what's right in our lives, and what we hope to live for. That would be a far better lesson, I think, than getting a hybrid Hyundai or an Ann Taylor jacket on the cheap. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.