Welcome to the Janovsky Report

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of .  .  . well at least one of two.

Last year I retired from a dual career: First, 20 years as a social studies teacher and supervisor in New York City schools — Seward Park HS in Manhattan and Grace Dodge Vocational HS in the Bronx. Then, 34 years as an attorney with firms in New York, practicing commercial litigation and bankruptcy.

While I was a teacher, I also pursued guitar playing, singing and songwriting at coffeehouses and colleges around New York. In 1978-80 I released albums on Folkways Records (now Smithsonian Folkways): Winners and Losers, Campaign Songs from Critical Elections in American History, v. I and II (1800-1976). At that Spotify link or on Apple Music, you can stream any of 50 actual Presidential campaign songs or all of ‘em. Among others, I recommend We’re ready for Teddy, from the 1912 Bull Moose campaign.

Sadly, neither the coffeehouses or the records enabled me to quit my day job, so I changed day jobs, studying evenings at Fordham Law School and leaving education for law in 1988.

While I was a lawyer, I began writing material in addition to the motions and briefs I wrote for work.  My passion for film led to annual reviews of the films I saw that year, which I circulated to family and friends. They also appeared on the Microsoft Network as The Janovsky Report, as good as any name for this Substack.

In the late ‘90s, I became fascinated with the life of Dr. Israel Schaechter (1876-1949), my great-uncle — a French doctor and highly decorated World War I veteran who survived World War II hidden by farmers in occupied France. I traced his footsteps on trips to France and wrote about it in an article in Midstream magazine. You can read the expanded (and illustrated) version of this at Gifts from a Spiritual Ancestor.

I was always interested in politics, but developments at and after the turn of the millennium supercharged this – outrage over the 2000 (actually) stolen election, the advent of internet sites like Slate and Salon, and finally blogs, in particular, Daily Kos in 2003. When Daily Kos enabled any member to write “diaries,” I started to write them under a pseudonym because I prudently believed my firm and its clients would not love a lawyer writing for a Democratic activist blog. My first pseudonym was “Upper West” until I was doxxed in 2013 and had to change it to “Bethesda 1971,” which it remains. In the past 20 years I’ve written over 1500 diaries, of which over a hundred were recommended onto what they now call the “Trending” list. Here’s one that got a lot of attention: OK Boomers. Here's a Longevity Tip: Do NOT do what Joe Biden is doing in this picture.

I’ve been a student since 2015 of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a “heterodox” economic doctrine that describes modern economies where currency is fiat money established and created by a monetary sovereign. MMT challenges the primacy of deficit reduction as as an economic policy goal. The critical government policy it advocates is a federal job guarantee at a living wage, with health and other benefits. Here’s a Daily Kos diary I wrote about it: Democratic Deficit Obsession: A Surrender to the GOP's Asymmetrical Debt Warfare.

Since about 2018, I’ve become convinced the key to preserving democracy here is awakening the huge electoral potential of young voters and have been writing about it in Daily Kos diaries, like We Can Unleash the Sleeping Giant Waiting to Save Democracy in the United States. Four million people turn 18 every year, and they and their 18-29 cohort vote overwhelming for Democrats. I’ve been working with several groups, including The Civics Center, whose goal is to have a voter registration drive in every high school in the country. I’ve also worked with young voter groups such as TurnUp.US, and Civic Influencers.

What will I be writing about here?

Well, all of the above, and some other stuff too.

Welcome!