Music When I Was A Kid

In terms of music, I was one very lucky teenager. If I liked a musician or a band, I would book them to play my college, Stony Brook. I was chair of the Student Activities Board and much of the music we brought to the school was fairly unknown but on the verge-- like Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Four Tops (they were already famous), Big Brother, Grateful Dead, Otis Redding, the Blue Oyster Cult (the Soft White Underbelly then), Ravi Shankar, Joni Mitchell, Smokey Robinson, The Band... Bands were so inexpensive to book back then and I had what appeared to me to be an unlimited budget. $400 for the Doors, $1,500 to $3,500 for bands from England, $50 for a random folk singer who had nothing better to do that night.

Me then-- 1965 on the left, 1969 on the right, after 4 years of drugs

Besides the ones who became famous there were lots of others that never became really broke through but who I thought were fantastic and worthwhile. Some I booked as opening acts-- like two kids I met at a Velvet Underground performance in Manhattan, Tim Buckley (for the Doors) and Jackson Browne (for Judy Collins)-- and others I booked to play informal pop-up concerts in the dorm lounges, like The Fugs and Tom Rush.




I spent a lot of time listening to bands in New York and asking them to play my school, an hour away. It's how I met Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, neither at all really known at the time, as well as Eric Anderson, Tim Hardin and Richie Havens, dozens more. And I'd get everyone out to Stony Brook. Some of the students loved what I was doing and some hated it and hated me for it. Most of the kids were too busy studying to notice.





I met John Hammond at the Cafe Au Go Go and talked him into coming back to Stony Brook and play (for $50). When I was driving him down the Long Island Expressway, his fingers were so steady that he found stations on my car radio that I never knew existed. I had seen him when Jimi Hendrix's band (Jimmy James and the Blue Flames) was his backup band. This is the album he released while I was a freshman:





The bands that were always playing at the Cafe Au Go Go all played Stony Brook-- Paul Butterfield, the Blues Project-- and any band that came to the East Coast I'd co-book with Howard Solomon, the guy who ran the place, like the Youngbloods and Love. And you know what made me think of spending tonight on music? Sandy Bull. I was just in Thailand last week and Sandy Bull's music popped into my head while I was meditating in a Vietnamese temple. The music that was playing just brought Sandy Bull up. Give him a listen. He never got real famous but he was an inspiration for me:





One more thing. I was on acid one time and someone turned me onto an album, The Classical Music of Pakistan by Salamat and Nazikot Ali (usually called the Ali Brothers). I wanted to book them to play so bad. I would listen to that album whenever I got high (basically everyday). But I could never find a way to get in touch with them. I played the album for the Jefferson Airplane when they stayed at my house before a concert. The next album had a song clearly influenced by the Ali Brothers. In 1969 I bought a VW van in Germany and drove to Pakistan to find them. When I got to their small rural village in the mountains I found out they were playing in India. Bummer! A few years later I was working in the restaurant at the Kosmos, the meditation center in Amsterdam. I had just finished washing up and was dead tired and couldn't wait to get home and go to sleep. A friend came down and said, "There's this great band playing upstairs you have to see." I whined about how tired I was and he said I should go to sleep on the floor while listening to them. I didn't have the strength to resist and he dragged me upstairs. It was the Ali Brothers. It was magic.

Police Brutality

Me and Keisha

Two years ago I met Nickeisha Gaynor at an event for me at Stony Brook University. She introduced me at the ceremony. At the time she was writing a paper on Mass Incarceration regarding gangs and police brutality. She reminded me about all the athletes lately protesting against police brutality. She worries that her generation, is not as active in learning about the politics of our time. In her hope to change that, she sent me this essay and I remembered about the incredible video she did a couple of years ago, "The Right To Grow Up."



Police Brutality-- Taking Advantage Of "Self Defence"
by Nickeisha Gaynor


Stop Police Brutality! Black lives matter! We've cried it. We've protested it. We've churched it. We've pleaded for it to stop. In fact, we have not only done this peacefully, but we have also ensured it was done lawfully. We have abided by the rules and regulations in return for what we had asked for--and end to police brutality. It is evident that changes like this take time, but it’s sad to say, it’s been too long now. As a family, we need to protect ourselves!

Let us take a look at the current situation that just occurred in Baltimore. How many people do we actually hear focusing on the death of Freddie Gray? I guarantee you that we are all aware of the riots and the lootings in Baltimore, but hardly about Gray, the 25 year old African American, who’d suffered multiple fractures and a broken spine while detained by police officers. It is as if police brutality is normal nowadays. We protested on this matter before, yet police brutality continues. We watch our brothers and sisters die off one by one, and all we hear is “it was self defense.” If police officers can use that line, why can’t we? We are being targeted by a higher power, isn’t it fair for us to do whatever we can to protect ourselves and call it “self defense?”

Now gangs in Baltimore have decided to put their differences aside and come together as one and still, the main issue of police brutality was ignored. They want Blacks to fight back. They wanted them to make themselves look bad just so they may use that as the opportunity to justify their reasons for their actions. Well, it worked. Stores were vandalized by protesters and it only got worse from there. What did you think the news reporters were going to show? Not the peaceful protest that took place prior, but the violent acts that occurred after. That is the problem. We will never be seen when we peacefully ask for a change, but will always be seen as animals that needs to be tamed.

We need a new tactic, not to end up begging and pleading for help from the government, etc., but for us to keep on coming together as a family, not only for protesting, not only for church, not only for school, not only for work, etc., but in everything we do. We seriously need to regain our original identity, because we were once known for our hands on work, and now sadly, for our hands on guns. We need to unify once again and yes, we need the gangs in our community to keep on coming together as one also. We need to protect ourselves!

Someone is asking if I’m serious about the unification of gangs. Let us take this time to start reminiscing on what gangs use to be like when there was unity. I recently saw a post on the internet that stated, CRIP: Crip stands for Community Revolution in Progress. Now, I am not sure if that was the original meaning being CRIP, however, because the originality of their aim was to protect our community nothing more nothing less, I support it. It was also said that BLOOD: Blood stands for Brotherly Love Overcomes Our Depression. Realize that their goal was to overcome oppression not to cause fear nor stir up aggression? That’s what gangs were all about, of course when there was unity. Thus, it’s very clear that with unity, we can make ends meet!

Intriguingly, the difference in this generation is that ever since we have obtained our freedom, everyone is more to themselves. I know it will be hard to break out of this habit, especially with today’s entertainment industry encouraging us to be drug addicts, self centered and materialistic. Some may think otherwise, but let us think about some of these rappers we listen to. Rick Ross for instance. Hopefully we all know of him. If not, Rick Ross didn’t only go to college with a football scholarship, but he also had a clean reputation going on for him. He was a correctional officer. Evidently, in order to get that job, his record had to be completely clean, thus, it can be implied that he never sold drugs, nor had any criminal involvement. Ironically, his music videos portrayed that he did... why?

Food for thought: Radio stations and record companies would more likely replay a song that consistently portrays pain, gambling, addiction, and money. Rappers nowadays realize this strategy, and use it to their advantage to make easy money. Whether or not the music industry is aware that they're manipulating us, they actually are. Still don't believe me? Let's take a look at the type of songs we are listening to nowadays: "I'm in love with the coco!" This is the most explicit example one can give. Those are the songs that are constantly playing and are constantly being listened to. We not only sing along to these types of songs when we hear them, but we also sing them with confidence--which shows a form of support towards those types of lyrics. We may emphasize that these are just songs, but they're instilling this idea in our mindset that criminal activities and drug use aren't problems or an issue. Thus, we need to turn those music off and let these entertainers know that they’re also encouraging police officers to target minorities even more. We have been brained-wash. It is now time that we wash the filth out of our minds and start to think clear once again, so we can unite in peace to end this rubbish.

Furthermore, I strongly believe we should encourage the gangs in our community to help protect us. I suggest this because I was recently assaulted near a bus stop by a homeless man. He tried to rob me. Normal people stood by and watched. I was wrestling this man for around 2 minutes straight, but it felt like it was for hours. Let me reiterate the fact that "normal people stood by and watched.” It was both ex gang members and gang members, who had stepped in and help me detain the robber, until the cops arrived. These gang members weren't affiliated with each other, yet they still came together to help me. This situation itself let me realize that gangs do have the power to help save lives despite their differences. They are bold. Fearless. Strong. If only they used their strength for good? I believe we need to let them realize that their gangs aren’t their only family; we are all in this together. We need to be in this together!

In due time, we will gain justice. We just need to gain back our love in our communities, reclaim our safekeeping and become the hard working people we once were. It is time that we stop being too dependent and let us start being builders again. We all have a great amount of responsibility to take on, I know, but when we do take it on, we will surely have great power to not being fearful. I will be honest with you all. I strongly doubt that police brutality will come to an end, thus, once again, it is up to us to protect ourselves. Can we fight back if cops are in the wrong? If a black man is getting beat down by police officers wrongfully, he should be able to fight back and call it “self defence”. Many of you may assume I’m pro-violence because I am suggesting we fight back, but I’m quite the contrary. I’m in favor of self-defense, and I hope you will be too. It’s now time that we unite and help protect ourselves! Not stir up trouble, but let the government recognize that though we need police officers around, we also need to put our foot down! Police officers can get away with violent behaviors by simply calling it self-defence. A black man fighting back pays with his life or serve imprisonment. If you have not gotten anything from what I have said so far, I would like you to get this: “Self-defence” should not only be for the privileged, but also for the disadvantaged!

Stephanie Kelton: "One Tweet At A Time"

When I was at Stony Brook, I was the head of the Student Activities Board for several years. I booked Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, The Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Muddy Waters, The Who, The Temptations, Joni Mitchell, Ravi Shankar, Jackson Browne, Pink Floyd, The Fugs, The Byrds, Tim Buckley... to play there. I would have booked Stephanie Kelton for sure. But she was in kindergarten then. A top economist, she's now the head of Center for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice at Stony Brook. I feel like I was cheated that she was teaching when I went there. Now I get her to talk with the Blue America candidates who want a better grounding in "how do you pay for it?" and in the intricacies of Medicare-for-All, Job Guarantee and free public education right through college. Anyway, I'm glad to see someone else booked her to give a public talk:

Promoting the event Liza N. Burby noted that Kelton teaches that We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About Money.

When she’s not juggling bookings with NPR, Barron’s, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg TV, Stephanie Kelton might be found picking up and dropping off her two school-aged children and the family Samoyed-- not to mention teaching classes in economics and public policy at Stony Brook University. Then there’s her book deadline.

Other days might include speaking engagements in Australia, Milan or the House of Lords in London. Also on her calendar: the Oct. 15 Presidential Lecture, “But How Will We Pay for It? Making Public Money Work for Us,” which happens to be the title of her upcoming book. In this lecture she’ll discuss why the conversation about good policy falls apart when politicians ask how government programs will be paid for.

Her husband of 14 years, Paul Kelton, a leading historian and professor and the first Gardiner Chair in American History at Stony Brook, said the family has become used to Stephanie’s schedule. After all, from 2015-2016 when they still lived in Lawrence, Kansas, Kelton had to be present in the Capitol where she was a chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee minority party, commuting home when she could. She then served as an economic advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

The Keltons moved to Setauket [home of neo-fascist crackpot Robert Mercer] in 2017 when they were recruited to teach at Stony Brook. Michael A. Bernstein, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs, said this was “one of those serendipitous moments when we could undertake a dual recruitment that worked dramatically for the institution as a whole.”

...“Stephanie is the rare combination of teacher, innovator and thought leader,” said President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD, who invited Kelton to speak at his Presidential Lecture Series. “Her ideas and approach to economics are changing the game at the highest levels and so it makes perfect sense to ask her to share some of her powerful perspective with our community in this forum.”

Beltway heavyweights say Kelton-- who was named by Politico as as one of 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016”-- is a rising star not only in financial and economic circles, but political ones as well.

Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) said that if a Democrat is elected president in 2020, Kelton will likely be chosen as a senior advisor.

“She’s not just a brilliant thinker,” he said. “She’s going to be a force in the next 15 years in shaping economic policy.”

Senator Sanders described her as an outstanding and innovative thinker who was extremely helpful to him while they worked together.

“Stephanie is one of the leading economists in our country who is fighting to create an economy that works for all and not just the few,” he added. “We need more economists like her.”

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, also weighed in. “There are few if any economists able to jump into the fray and come up with such original and compelling ideas as Stephanie Kelton-- and able to communicate them with such clarity and aplomb. A national treasure.”

...Kelton, a macroeconomist, said her early training was conventional and included Cambridge University for her masters. Before earning her PhD at the New School in New York City-- which she selected for its diverse perspectives-- she spent a year at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy think tank. That’s when she first encountered the work of Warren Mosler, a Wall Street financier who was challenging the way economists think about money. He reached out to economists who follow Keynes, Kelton among them. She and several peers researched ideas she said had been lost in history and they pieced together Modern Monetary Theory, a burgeoning school of thought in economics.

Kelton said MMT is hard to define, but it’s “probably the greatest group project in the history of economics, a brand name that refers to the scholarship that was developed by around half a dozen people over 20-plus years.”

“It’s an enormous body of literature that has as its underpinning attention to the monetary system, the nature of money and why governments that operate with their own non-convertible fiat currencies can use their own budgets to maintain a full employment economy and low inflation,” she continued. “MMT is about pulling back the curtains so that we can see clearly what options are available instead of focusing on imagined barriers/obstructions that hamstring good policy.”

Among Kelton’s big ideas is the job guarantee, a public option that would be federally funded but locally administered-- a concept she said is at least as old as the Second Bill of Rights proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, and that was part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Democratic platform until the 1980s.

“It says if you want to work and you can’t find a job anywhere else in the economy, there’s a job for you,” she explained. “The Federal Government has to pay for it and it can be housed under the Department of Labor. They can set broad parameters that all jobs have to be oriented to criteria like a care economy: caring for people, communities and the planet.”

“I’ve always considered this the unfinished business of the Democratic Party,” she said. “But now you have Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Sanders all talking in terms of finding a way to guaranteed employment, which is pretty remarkable.”

Kelton believes she is having an impact on the current policy debates, but absent the financial crisis of 2008 she’s not sure that her ideas would have gotten as much attention and respect. The blog she started in 2009 in response to the crisis was an unconventional way to get her economic ideas out into the mainstream, and she got real-time responses. By 2013 she was being invited to make the rounds of more than 100 financial planning events, and she was gaining thousands of Twitter followers. In 2017, she had opinion pieces published in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

She continues to gain respect both nationally and abroad. Currently she’s a subject of a documentary by London-based filmmaker Paul Thomas about the MMT theory, and Netflix wants to talk to her for a documentary based on her research about the macroeconomic effects of student debt cancellation.

  “She’s still on an upward trajectory and will be for a long time,” said her colleague Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell professor of law and finance at Cornell University. “It’s not just academic economists who know who she is. People who work in the financial markets, political figures and people interested in public policy are all wild about her. All the journalists bring her on their shows so she’s becoming more well-known to the lay public as well as the specialists.”

...[S]he hopes to inspire her Stony Brook students to become future economists-- or at least get excited by the ideas.

“I love teaching courses that are policy-oriented around the economy,” Kelton said. “I like being able to bring a range of experiences that are diverse and have real-world applications that bring excitement into my classroom.”

The Republican War On Immigrants Melds Perfectly Into Their War On Science

And a delightful dining companion

One of the brilliant innovations of the Trump phenomenon has been the turning of expertise into a class issue. Formerly, scientists were political liabilities only insofar as their work clashed with the teachings of TV Bible-thumpers. Now, any person who in any way disputes popular misconceptions-- that balancing a budget is just like balancing a checkbook, that two snowfalls in a week prove global warming isn't real, that handguns would have saved Jews from the Holocaust or little kids from the Sandy Hook massacre-- is part of an elitist conspiracy to deny the selfhood of the Google-educated American. The Republicans understand this axiom: No politician in the Trump era is going to dive in a foxhole to save scientific research. Scientists, like reporters, Muslims and the French, are out.

That was from Matt Taibbi's essay in Rolling Stone this week, Trump The Destroyer, which we discussed in some depth earlier. When I read it I thought of a guy I only met a couple of times, a medical researcher in the field of molecular microbiology, Samuel Stanley, Jr., who I met a couple years ago, after he had been appointed president of SUNY, Stony Brook, where decades ago I was an undergraduate. In recent posts I've mentioned how pretty recently Stony Brook had decided to honor two donors with a dinner, myself and... a reclusive local man now known throughout the world as the financier behind the Trump Regime curtain, Robert Mercer. It always a cute little story about how I suggested it would be an uncomfortable match and how Stony Brook had decided to have two separate dinners instead. This morning I noticed that Dr. Stanley had penned a guest post for Scientific American, one I'm going to guess isn't going to endear him to the Mercers or any other Trumpists.


Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Is a Threat to American Leadership
-by Dr. Samuel Stanley, Jr.,
President, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery.

Iranian-American engineer and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari was a co-sponsor of the Ansari X-Prize for private spaceflight

America’s universities are the best in the world. The quality of the students, faculty, teaching, infrastructure, the commitment to academic freedom, and the extraordinary research opportunities attract the best and brightest people from around the globe to the United States. And our nation is far better for it.

Last year six recipients of the Nobel Prize were working at American universities: the three winners of the prize in physics, the two winners in economics, and one of the three winners in chemistry. All six were foreign born. Bob Dylan was the only Nobel laureate last year born in the United States. And 2016 was no fluke. In all, 42 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2015 went to individuals working/living in the United States, and nearly one third of those recipients were born outside the U.S. Our ability to attract the world’s leading scientists to our universities has helped us maintain global leadership in innovation and discovery, a tremendous component of our economic strength and national security.

But it is not just faculty that have come to U.S. universities to pursue their research. We also have been the destination of choice for outstanding graduate and undergraduate students from around the world. At Stony Brook University and many other top research universities, the majority of our graduate students in STEM fields are international students. Many of these talented students stay on after their education and become contributors to innovation and economic development in our country. The economic impact of international students on the U.S. economy was nearly $36 billion dollars in 2015, with $4 billion in New York State alone. Just on my campus, roughly 10 percent of the startup companies at our business incubator are led by foreign born scientists with much of the workforce coming from recent international doctoral students. And the impact of international students on our campus is not just economic, they add to the diversity of culture and ideas on our campus, broadening the experience of every student at Stony Brook University and better preparing them for the 21st century world.

But now this is all at risk. New immigration policies, coupled with xenophobic rhetoric and actions both before and after the election, are undoing the compact between the United States and those seeking opportunity from around the world. The first executive order nearly resulted in the deportation of the President of Stony Brook’s Graduate Student Organization, a former Fulbright Scholar, who had been studying in the United States for 10 years. The campus was dramatically unsettled, with an initial loss of the sense of security and welcoming inclusive environment that we have worked so hard to establish.

Lamar Smith & Darrell Issa, worst of both worlds

And the impact is not just local. Research uni-versities are seeing an immediate effect on the recruitment of international faculty and students. Stony Brook University has seen a decline of roughly 10 percent in international applications for graduate school this year, a figure that seems to be on a par with the decline seen at other institutions. The reasons for these declines may not be solely based on anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, but some accepted applicants to Stony Brook, especially from countries targeted by the first Executive Order, have stated explicitly that they will choose a Canadian or Australian university instead, based on the uncertainty of U.S. immigration policy and the fact that they are being singled out based on their country of origin, not on their academic credentials. And the recent suspension of expedited processing of H1-B visas, which is of significant concern to the Technology Sector, could also have a chilling effect on the ability of Universities to attract outstanding international faculty and scientists to help sustain our research and educational missions.

Rather than creating pathways to citizenship like DACA, the anti-immigration rhetoric, and now acts of violence against immigrants to the United States, is sending a message to the world that the United States, and by implication, our universities, no longer will be a welcoming and safe environment for international students and faculty. “They” should look elsewhere, and, unfortunately for us, they will.

It may not be too late to make this right. Policy needs to be based on facts, not fear. Recent data from Homeland Security on the relative risks posed by recent immigrants to the U.S. vs those who have been residents for years should be incorporated into our approach to security. Continuing DACA and moving to a policy that “staples a Green Card” on to the diploma of graduates of U.S. universities would go a long way to helping address our workforce issues in technology and reassuring the world that we do still want best and the brightest to study and work in the United States of America.

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery. We augment our extraordinary homegrown talent with future leaders from around the world. But time is short, the new policies and rhetoric are taking their toll, significant damage is being done, and if we surrender our global edge in innovation and discovery, we may never get it back.

Bernie Won? Maybe So... On Free College Tuition At State Universities

A couple of days ago New York’s corrupt governor, Andrew Cuomo, was being derided for vetoing a bill to make sure indigent suspects had legal representation. But yesterday his praises were being sung by both Hillary Clinton and, especially, Bernie Sanders for his free tuition proposal. Under it, the state of New York will pay tuition for hundreds of thousands of middle- and low-income New Yorkers (kids whose families are making less than $125,000/year) at state colleges and at community colleges. This would be a pilot program for the whole country.

I have some first hand experience with this system. My first choice after high school was Cornell University, a very expensive private university upstate. I was accepted and offered a scholarship— but it wasn’t enough and my parents didn’t have the money to cover the difference. I opted for a state university instead, SUNY, Stony Brook. Recently I wrote a program of theirs into my will and wrote about it here. The program gives students from households making less than $15,000/year free tuition and housing. If Cuomo’s bill passes, I guess I’ll have to come up with something else to do with my gift to my alma mater.

Under the proposal, the state would complete students’ tuition payments by supplementing existing state and federal grant programs — essentially covering the balance, though administration officials said some students could have their entire four-year education covered.

In his remarks, the governor — who had endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Sanders’s opponent in the primary — picked up the senator’s mantle, arguing that student debt was crippling the prospects of generations of young Americans.

“It’s like starting a race with an anchor tied to your leg,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding that many students in New York and elsewhere left school $30,000 or more in debt.

“This society should say, ‘We’re going to pay for college because you need college to be successful,’” he added. “And New York State — New York State is going to do something about it.”

Mr. Cuomo hopes for a quick start for his idea, with a three-year rollout beginning in the fall, with a $100,000 income limit, rising to $125,000 by 2019, a timetable the administration billed as more speedy than the one embraced by Mrs. Clinton during her presidential campaign. (On Twitter, Mrs. Clinton said she was “delighted” by the governor’s proposal, calling it a plan that she and Mr. Sanders had “worked hard on.”)

Still, Mr. Cuomo’s plan would affect a far smaller pool of students than federal proposals. Initial estimates from the administration said the program would allow nearly a million New York families with college-age children, or independent adults, to qualify. The actual number of students receiving tuition-free education would probably be about 200,000 by the time it was fully enacted in 2019, according to Jim Malatras, the director of state operations.

It was likewise unclear how much the program would cost. The administration estimated that the state’s annual outlay would be $163 million by 2019, though it acknowledged that estimate could be affected by participation and level of need.

“There are some kids that aren’t getting anything right now that would be made whole,” Mr. Malatras said. “And some kids that are in the program, we would just fill in the gap.”

New York already offers in-state students one of the lowest tuition rates in the nation. Current full-time tuition at four-year State University of New York schools for residents is $6,470; at two-year community colleges, the cost is $4,350. Full-time costs for City University of New York schools are about the same. The state also provides nearly $1 billion in support through its tuition assistance program, which has an adjusted gross income limit of just under $100,000. Those awards top out at $5,165; many grants are smaller.

Costs for the state could also rise as enrollment rises. Some 400,000 students currently attend state or city universities full time, but the administration projects that the lure of a tuition-free system could increase the student population by 10 percent by 2019.

Estimates for other free-tuition proposals have said that costs would be even higher. A 2015 report by the city’s Independent Budget Office put the cost for the city’s community colleges alone at $138 million to $232 million. But Mr. Malatras expressed confidence in the administration’s estimate, saying it had calculated costs considering a variety of factors, including the number of students already receiving money through federal Pell grants, the state tuition assistance program and tuition credits.

But even some supporters expressed some doubt about how much Mr. Cuomo’s plan could cost the state. “The cost estimate of $163 million begs the question: If it costs so little, why haven’t we done it before?” said Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, chairwoman of the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee.

The tuition plan will require legislative approval, a potential challenge when the governor and lawmakers have been at odds over a raise and other issues. On Tuesday, both Democrats and Republicans offered qualified support for the plan, saying they wanted more details on the proposal and adding that each party also had worked to lower tuition.

…Bruce Gyory, an Albany-based political consultant, said the governor’s announcement would appeal to the same voters who flocked to Mr. Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries last year — and to voters with some college education but no degree, who swung to Donald J. Trump’s column in the general election. Such voters made up nearly a third of the electorate, according to exit polls, Mr. Gyory said.

“When you’re able to take an innovative policy and have it affect a broad cross section of the state and the electorate, and you know it also resonates nationally, that’s not a bad play,” Mr. Gyory said. “In fact, it’s a very astute move.”

Students and faculty also seemed intrigued by the proposal. Katie Montwill, a junior studying health science at Stony Brook University, called the idea “pretty awesome, on the outside,” though she added she was not sure how it would be funded. Ms. Montwill, 20, also suggested that the idea of tuition-free education might not sit well with some parents — including her own — who did not want their tax dollars to help put other people’s children through school.

“I feel like my parents wouldn’t be for it,” she said.

United University Professions, which represents 35,000 faculty members at New York State campuses, offered support for the plan but also argued for more full-time faculty, a sentiment echoed by other groups.

For his part, Mr. Sanders — who was greeted by shouts of “I love you, Bernie” and loud cheers by the crowd in Long Island City — was effusive in his praise of Mr. Cuomo’s idea, calling it “a revolutionary idea for higher education” that he envisioned would be emulated elsewhere.

“Here’s my prediction,” the senator said. “If New York State does it this year, mark my words, state after state will follow.”

How Many Of Your College Professors Do You Remember? How Many Are Worth Remembering?

That's me, dead center with the sign about Brooklyn. I was 16. (Hillary was campaigning for Barry Goldwater that day)

I read Malia Obama was taking a year off-- a gap year-- between high school and Harvard. What a great idea! I wish we had gap years when I was a kid! When I graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, I was happy to have a summer off. The summer before I had worked for some mysterious doctor/scientist in Millbrook, New York but I never got to know him. I worked digging an open sewer ditch for him. (Years later I hired him-- Timothy Leary-- as a speaker at Stony Brook, where I went to college, and he gave me my first acid trip when I picked him up at the airport. And years after that he helped with a video for one of the bands on my record label. But the summer after I graduated and before I went off to live at Stony Brook, I worked for Congressman Bill Ryan, the fiery liberal (milquetoast corporate "liberals" hadn't forced us to change the name to "progressives" back then) from Manhattan's Upper West Side, was my hero because he was the first member of the House to oppose the War in Vietnam. I volunteered to work in his campaign for mayor.

I met two people during that campaign who had big impacts on my life, one who wrote to me this morning and the other, who died in 1989, twenty years after I graduated from college. The first was Barry Brown, who's sister's husband, Mel Dubin, was running for NYC Comptroller on Ryan's ticket. Barry was from Brooklyn too, but from Erasmus, not Madison, and he was going to be a freshman at Stony Brook the next year too. We wound up rooming together one semester of our freshman year and becoming lifelong friends. Today he's the head of a department at a New York hospital. The other person, Robert Lekachman, was also going to start Stony Brook in the fall, but not as a student, as the chairman of the Economics Department. In fact, he had written the Economics 101 text book many colleges were using back then.

Until I met Bob, the only serious socialist I knew was my grandfather, who had come to New York as a teenager, fleeing murderous anti-Semitic Russian fascists, and my political idol. Bob Lekachman's ideas about economic and social justice were identical to my grandfather's except my grandfather had already learned not to trust the corrupt Democratic Party and Lekachman was still hoping to reform it from within.

I was out at Stony Brook last week and I blogged about the experience here and, of course, all kinds of old memories came flooding back. The third roommate that semester, Stephen Capson, who was an old friend from Madison, didn't come out to Stone Brook last week but we had dinner and he gave me the photo above. That picture was the cover of the New York Daily News in 1964. That's yours truly leading a little march for Lyndon Johnson on the Atlantic City boardwalk as part of the Democratic National Convention. I was there when Barbra Streisand sang the national anthem. Two years later I was chanting

Hey hey
LBJ
How many kids have you killed today?

I was arrested for burning my draft card in 1966. I heard about the first big draft board rally in New York and though I was living a couple hours away, on campus, and I was really just a kid, I managed to get there and get to the front of the rally which started out as a protest by 10 people and ended up with tens of thousands. An agreement was reached between the police and the organizers that the 10 leaders would get arrested as a symbolic gesture of nonviolent protest and everyone else would sing a few folk songs and go home peacefully. Well, no one consulted me. As the police ushered the 10 under the barricades I attached myself to Dr. Spock (not the Vulcan, the baby doctor) and claimed I was his aide and he might have a heart attack and die if I wasn't with him. The cop who challenged me-- he knew the difference between 10 and 11-- looked puzzled but Spock laughed and agreed and in I went-- to jail. It was my first time, though not my last. But the first was the best. It was a cell filled with the coolest people in NY: Allen Ginsburg, Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Saunders, Benjamin Spock... Eventually the rest of the crowd got pissed off and everyone wanted to be arrested so the police started arresting everyone until there was no more capacity. And then they let everyone go. It was all kind of good-natured.

Anyway, back to Bob Lekachman for a minute. I took a couple of classes from him at Stony Brook but he left the school even before I went off to travel around the world and live overseas. He was only 68 when he died in 1989, a distinguished professor at Lehman College, CUNY. This is from his NYTimes obit:

Joseph S. Murphy, Chancellor of City University, said yesterday that Dr. Lekachman's "legacy of intellectually rigorous analysis of the economy and the effects of government policy on the poor and working class should strongly influence the way scholars study economics in the future."

Sought Social Justice

Throughout his career Dr. Lekachman espoused a philosophy that sought to promote social justice simultaneously with economic growth. He advocated compassion on the part of government toward the underprivileged. His last published work, which appeared last week in The Nation magazine, was a cautionary article of advice to President-elect George Bush.

"He brought a liberal, left-wing, Marxist point of view to economics, but he was in no sense an ideologue," said Harold M. Proshansky, president of City University's Graduate Center. "He never argued in generalities, and his openness and objectivity captivated even those who disagreed with his basic positions."

Dr. Lekachman was in demand as a public speaker, appearing frequently on television and radio programs dealing with public affairs, where his engaging manner and quick wit enlivened what has been called ''the dismal science'' of economics.

Dr. Leonard Lief, president of Lehman College, noted that Dr. Lekachman "identified strongly with New York City and particularly with the Bronx, where he taught."

Critical of President Reagan

Because of his illness, which was in remission until several months ago, Dr. Lekachman had taken a leave of absence for the fall semester but had recently asked to be scheduled for classes, his health permitting, in the spring semester.

Dr. Lekachman's two most recent books, both critical of President Reagan and written in a pungent and polemical style, were Visions and Nightmares: America After Reagan, published by Macmillan in 1987, and Greed Is Not Enough (Pantheon, 1982), a critique of "Reaganomics." Perhaps his most widely read books are A History of Economic Ideas (1959) and The Age of Keynes (1966), which were translated into several languages and used extensively as texts.

The sound kicks in properly after about three-and-a-half minutes:

My Fabulous, Wonderful Adventure At Stony Brook This Week

This was a pretty special week for me. My doctor gave me permission to fly for the first time since my stem cell transplant left me without an immune system. I've spent the last 6 months gets immunized for everything from whooping cough and diptheria to polio and dozens of strains of influenza. But she told me I can start going to concerts again and even go on planes-- crowded places where germs are known to lurk. My old university, Stony Brook, had planned a ceremony to honor my support of the EOP/AIM program, which provides access to higher education-- and the opportunities that come with that-- for economically disadvantaged students who possess the potential to succeed in college, but whose academic preparation in high school has not fully prepared them to pursue college education. The scholarship I've set up with them is particularly aimed at kids determined to pursue a career in public service.

I wasn't sure what they had in mind but I did know there would be a ceremony starting at 5 and there'd be dinner. Since I was going out there for the day anyway, I asked if it would be possible to put together a lunch with the current EOP/AIM students who are interested in public service and I asked 3 friends to join me in answering questions from the students, DuWayne Gregory, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, and a current candidate for Congress (Peter King's seat on Long Island's South Shore); Tom Suozzi, the fiery former Nassau County Executive who is also running for Congress this year (Steve Israel's seat on the North Shore); and David Keith, closer in age to the students and one of the most sought-after political strategists anywhere in America, currently employed by Michael Bloomberg and Bette Midler's non-partisan greening of New York initiative.

My three guests were outstanding and, judging by the questions and responses, the students seemed to get a great deal out of it. Afterwards a faculty member stood up and announced that long after the students in the room had forgotten any individual classes they had taken during their college careers, they would probably still remember the two plus hours we had just spent talking about public service and leadership.

DuWayne Gregory has been endorsed by Blue America and we've talked about his qualifications for office and about his campaign for the seat before. The other candidate, Tom Suozzi, is in the middle of the extensive Blue America vetting process and we haven't written much about him and his swing-district race that came alive when Steve Israel announced he would finally be retiring from Congress. Tom is a consummate Long Island politician, albeit always a fighter and an outsider, never an establishment hack, and he turned out to be a truly inspirational speaker in the best sense of the term.

The NY-03 race features 5 Democrats vying for Israel's seat, including Jonathan Clarke, the candidate who endorsed Bernie and is running on his platform, plus 3 pretty standard, garden variety careerist local Democrats, Jon Kaiman, Anna Kaplan and Israel-crony Steve Stern. Suozzi is the outlier in the bunch, the deep thinker, primarily concerned with what he can do to perfect democracy and make the lives of his Nassau, Suffolk and Queens constituents better.

As of the March 31 FEC filing deadline, Israel's candidate, Steve Stern, had raised the most money, $500,634 (including nearly $70,000 in self-funding) with the help of Israel's machine. Suozzi, a late entrant into the race, was close behind with $451,306, an amount similar to the $445,161 Anna Kaplan had raised. Jon Kaiman reported $242,379 and Jonathan Clarke, who's running a Bernie-style small donor campaign, hadn't generated enough money to have triggered a report by the end of March. Many observers are betting on Suozzi to win the Democratic nomination and to go on and win the district, which is closely divided between Democrats and Republicans but swings reliably blue in presidential years. Obama won the area against McCain 54-46% and 4 years later beat Romney there, 51-48%.

This cycle, the DCCC has been quietly counseling their corrupt conservative candidates to challenge their progressive opponents' ballot petition signatures, tying them up in court and draining their campaign funds in endless and expensive bickering. Israel recently got his puppet candidate, Steven Williams to try that with Syracuse progressive Eric Kingson and the DCCC succeed with that strategy to knock Lindy Li off the ballot for "ex"-Republican Mike Parrish in a suburban Philadelphia district. Jon Kaiman, a sleazy ex-Hempstead town supervisor, clallenged Suozzi's signatures, in what looks like a Steve Israel-inspired move that he hopes will help Stern. The likely Republican nominee, Jack Martins, pointed out, through his campaign manager, that "Whoever wins will be crawling across the finish line bruised and out of money" and that "Martins will be ready for them and will win in November."

Though more than 2,400 people signed Suozzi’s petition backing him as a candidate, Kaiman’s campaign charges the former Nassau County executive did not have 1,250 signatures from active registered Democrats living in the Third Congressional District.

“Suozzi did not submit the required number of valid signatures, and thus is not eligible to run for Congress,” Kaiman campaign manager Jeff Guillot said in a statement Monday. “As was shown, by our successful filing of over 4,000 signatures, it takes only grassroots support and a strong organization to get on the ballot.”

The signatures in question could be from people registered under different parties or at an address outside the district, or those who signed more than one candidate petition.

In a statement on Tuesday, Suozzi campaign manager Mike Florio said Suozzi’s petition is valid and called Kaiman’s objections “sad attempts by his opponents to distract voters from the real issues” that come “straight out of the Republican playbook.”

Back to Stony Brook for a moment, the school I graduated from in 1969. The Suffolk County legislature recognized the award the university gave me last week with an official proclamation of congratulations, a fancy-looking document suitable for framing and hanging. I had to laugh because my last previous interaction with Suffolk County was when I was the focus of the largest college campus drug bust in history (until then), Operation Stony Brook. Being incredibly incompetent, the police failed to arrest me. (They used to try busting me by sending policemen "disguised" with store-bought fake beards and hippie vests but with police shoes sticking out under their pants.) Anyway, instead the corrupt, Republican D.A., Harry O'Brien, negotiated with me to testify at a Grand Jury convened in Riverhead. During the proceedings there was a lot of screaming and cursing from righteously indignant conservatives and O'Brien had vowed to lock me up forever. He failed and years later he was caught late one night on Jones Beach with an underage black kid engaging in oral sex. These conservatives never change! But after all these years Suffolk County has changed-- and very much for the better; hey... I guess they like me now.

The picture up top is of me and Stony Brook poet Nickeisha Gaynor-- you can call her Keisha-- who introduced me at the ceremony. The Right To Grow Up is a video she made as a class project, inspired by Black Lives Matter, connecting the Jim Crow era to the present day. It's worth watching:

RIP Julian Bond, A Personal Hero

Saturday night, Julian Bond, one of my personal heroes, passed away. I didn't realize he was 75; I always assumed he was my age, maybe a year or two older. I first met him in 1966, and I'm going to tell you about that in a minute. In more recent years we've both been on the board of People for the American Way, where he has continued to inspire me. He's inspired a lot of people. In fact, this morning Eric Holder tweeted "Julian Bond-- activist, icon. A great man who made the gains of the next generation possible and the nation better. We owe him much."

From his days as the co-founder and communications director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to his chairmanship of the NAACP in the 21st century, Julian was a visionary and tireless champion for civil and human rights. He served as the SPLC's president from our founding in 1971 to 1979, and later as a member of its board of directors.

With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.

When I was a sophomore at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, I became chairman of the Student Activities Board. In that position, over the years, I brought groundbreaking, mostly then-unknown artists to play at the campus, musicians on the cutting edge of pop culture: Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Joni Mitchell, The Dead, Otis Redding, the Airplane, Big Brother, Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, Muddy Waters, Country Joe, Ravi Shankar, Pink Floyd, The Byrds... But there was also a speakers series I felt I could use to help expose students to a more overtly cutting edge. I was happy to invite Timothy Leary to speak at the campus. And then there was Julian Bond.

Julian Bond was one of 8 African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in the wake of passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Come January 1966, however, the Georgia House voted 184-12 not to seat him because he publicly opposed the war against Vietnam. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Georgia House was depriving him of his freedom of speech and that they must seat him. They did, and I booked him to give a lecture at Stony Brook. Mrs. Couey, my lovely, batty old faculty adviser told me I couldn't present such an unbalanced program at a tax-funded university. I asked her if she wanted me to book the head of the KKK to balance it. "Now, Howie, you're so funny. You do the right thing." So I booked Senator Strom Thurmond as a speaker for the same evening. Balance!

A week before the event-- stoned out of my mind, as I was for my entire four years at Stony Brook-- I called Thurmond's office and explained that we're a struggling state university and the budget is tight and that I couldn't pay him the $5,000 I had offered and could he do it for $2,500? They said OK. I then called Julian and explained there was a change in plans and we would have to give him $7,500 instead of the agreed-upon $5,000. I felt I needed to do more.

The day of the event I picked Julian up at the airport in a fancy rented car and took him to the most exclusive restaurant in Suffolk County, the 3 Village Inn. We had an amazing dinner, and when we were leaving, we were approached in the parking lot by two waiters who said that although almost all the waiters were African Americans, this was the first time they had ever seen an African American eat there. They both had tears in their eyes.

Earlier I had asked my Hospitality Committee chairman to walk over to the Long Island Railroad Station and meet Thurmond. I gave him $10 and asked him to take the senator to a beer-and-pizza joint down the road from the campus for dinner. I knew Stephen would be very polite and charming to him-- it's in his nature. He was the most flamboyantly gay person I knew at the time.

Julian spoke, and the audience gave him a standing ovation. Then Senator Thurmond took the stage, and the entire audience-- as one and with no prompting-- got up and walked out of the gym. Mrs. Couey and Stephen, forever the most courteous and proper guy I had ever run across, stayed to hear Thurmond. No one ever told me what he talked about.

Julian served in the Georgia state legislature for two decades. Soon after he spoke at Stony Brook he was fighting on the floor of the Democratic convention in Chicago as the head of an alternative delegation trying to unseat the racists in the official delegation headed by Governor Lester Maddox, best known for having barred black students who wanted to eat at his segregated restaurant next to Georgia Tech with an ax handle-- and then for claiming LBJ and the communists put him out of business. The wave of the future. (The video at that link can't be embedded but I urge you to watch it.)

Sunday, President Obama issued this statement about Julian's passing: 

Julian Bond was a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend. Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life-– from his leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to his founding role with the Southern Poverty Law Center, to his pioneering service in the Georgia legislature and his steady hand at the helm of the NAACP. Michelle and I have benefited from his example, his counsel, and his friendship-– and we offer our prayers and sympathies to his wife, Pamela, and his children. Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that?

A few years before I met Julian, he wrote this poem (1960):

I too, hear America singing
But from where I stand
I can only hear Little Richard
And Fats Domino.
But sometimes
I hear Ray Charles
Drowning in his own tears
or Bird
Relaxing at Camarillo
Or Horace Silver doodling,
Then I don't mind standing
a little longer.

Aristotle, Virtue And Elizabeth Warren

The other day I visited my old campus-- Stony Brook-- for the first time in exactly 45 years. I was there to begin a relationship with a program that assists high school kids from financially strapped backgrounds envision themselves going to college and the succeeding in college. Great program! It's called EOP/AIM-- Educational Opportunity Program/Advancement on Individual Merit. The kids in the program have a significantly higher rate of graduation than the general college population does. While I was talking to the students about my experiences at Stony Brook and how those experiences changed and impacted my life, I also realized how much older I am than they are-- and than I was when I was there on that campus for those intense 4 years.

I talked to them about what I did as freshman class president and as the Chairman of the Student Activities Board. I talked to them about our role as students back then in ending racial segregation and the bigotry that it was built on, and about ending the war in Vietnam and the authoritarianism that allowed that to happen, and about widening self-awareness and extending consciousness. But I kept going back in my mind-- I spared them this part-- to the regret I feel that as I enter the final third of my life I have still never experienced a great and transformational president who has moved the country forward. We've had aggressive reactionaries who have moved the country drastically and tragically backwards-- Reagan and Bush/Cheney being the worst-- and uncourageous conservatives who have just been part of the status quo-- basically all of the rest from Eisenhower to Clinton to Obama.

It was lovely and even profound that we elected an African-American president. I wish it would have been a great African-American president, but at least it wasn't a reactionary like Reagan or Clarence Thomas. Next we're going to have a woman president and the symbolism will be, for many, especially women, worth the mediocrity of the likely candidate.

I knew better from his wretched Senate record but I gambled on Obama in 2008 anyway and was disappointed enough in his weakness to not vote for him again in 2012. I know I can't bring myself to vote for Hillary, or any other less of two evils.

When I spoke with the students I brought up artists I hired to play at Stony Brook, ones who I thought there was a chance they may have heard of-- Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Otis Redding, The Dead, Smokey Robinson, Big Brother, the Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, the 4 Tops... but there were dozens I didn't mention and a song from one get going through my head. It was a song by Tom Jans who, like so many of the great artists we had there, died very tragically and very young. The song was "Once Before I Die" and the reason it popped into my head for the first time in so many decades was because that's what I hope for, one great president before I die. Is it too much to hope for?

I missed Elizabeth Warren in Detroit because I was at Stony Brook. Read her new book, A Fighting Chance, if you're unsure that she has what it takes. Or just listen to me: she has what it takes in a way Hillary or Obama never will. Yesterday the National Journal outlined her 11 commandments of progressivism as presented in her Detroit speech. I was in a philosophy class that day learning about Aristotle and his virtues. This:

When the professor talked about "Magnificence" as public virtue, only Warren popped into my heard. This is what she was talking about in Detroit while the students were sorting through Aristotle:

• "We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it."

• "We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth."

• "We believe that the Internet shouldn't be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality."

• "We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage."

• "We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them."

• "We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt."

• "We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions."

• "We believe-- I can't believe I have to say this in 2014-- we believe in equal pay for equal work."

• "We believe that equal means equal, and that's true in marriage, it's true in the workplace, it's true in all of America."

• "We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform."

• "And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!"

And the main tenet of conservatives' philosophy, according to Warren? "I got mine. The rest of you are on your own."

That's not the kind of talk Hillary Clinton will ever give. Shenna Bellows... for sure. But a cut-and-paste corporate-Democrat... not in a million years. Friday, the L.A. Times noted the contrast between Warren and Clinton as well, pointing out that "the themes of her speech offered a striking contrast to recent appearances by Hillary Clinton... In comfortable settings that often involve a moderator and an armchair, Clinton frequently talks about her concerns for the younger generation and their struggle to find jobs or pay for college. But she has yet to outline a fist-pumping cause or coherent argument that would define a run for president. While Warren can fire up crowds with her populist call to rally against the powerful, Clinton is viewed by many Warren supporters as too close to Wall Street with a career that has been built by a proximity to power."