Stephen Gottlieb

How about a break from politics so we can talk about law.

Sixty-five years ago, in the summer of 1959, I met a music student in Chautauqua whose name was Gail Zimmermann. I completely lost touch with her after that summer. She told me that she was planning to marry her accompanist at the Eastman School where she studied most of the year. So our relationship was completely platonic – we never so much as kissed. But Gail became a very close friend.

Trump’s supporters will be disappointed at the future in stall for them. President Obama left us a healthy economy, but Trump dismantled it by imposing inflationary tariffs, mishandling the pandemic, and unraveling the progress Obama had made in the Middle East. Biden spent four years undoing the damage Trump did, getting inflation back under control, undoing the supply chain crisis, trying to deal with the much too cocky Netanyahu that Trump left believing he could have whatever he wanted regardless of what it did to American interests or policies.

This may surprise you, but voting is usually fun.

My family has been here for a century and a half – papa claimed we were the first Gottliebs in the Brooklyn phone book. Parts of my wife’s family have been here almost since the beginning of British colonization of the US – though this area was colonized even earlier by the Dutch. Though we have traveled, we have strong roots, and this country is very dear to us.

Mr. Trump has been encouraging America’s most violent people, vilified minorities, studied Hitler’s racist speeches and rise to power, glorified dictators, asserted he’d be dictator on day 1, and repeatedly denied that constitutional limitations apply to him. This station and other media have covered that in detail and I won’t repeat it here. Some don’t think he’d do all the bad things he says he’d do or encourage. But what are the risks?

The generation before me (not my parents – they had me in middle age) fought the fight of their lives on the battlefields of Germany and the South Pacific. Our generation seems unwilling to save the climate for our children or our country. Apparently, we can’t figure out how to cut the production of greenhouse gases that are warming the climate.

The Court abandoned nonpartisanship when it canceled the recount, the consistent method for resolving election disputes for two centuries, to choose Bush over Gore in 2000, then gave Republicans control of state legislatures and the U.S. House by protecting state legislative gerrymandering to allocate legislative seats in conflict with the share of votes.

I recently attended a meeting of J Street/Capital Region with Congressman Paul Tonko, to thank him for his work toward peace in the Middle East.

Some problems sound very different but have a great deal in common.