Joseph Bentivegna MD

When I was in first grade, I was mistakenly given an eighth-grade portion of food that I could not possibly finish. As I was presenting my uneaten portion to the woman at the garbage disposal, a redoubtable nun towering over me said, “Joseph, the pagan babies in Africa are starving and you’re wasting that good food.” I responded, “Sister, if I eat the food, the pagan babies still won’t get it.” Wap! The nun backhanded me across my face and the tray went flying.

Just as in 2016, the 2020 polls underestimated President Trump’s support. While polling has become more difficult in the age of cell phones and caller-ID, it is mathematically impossible not to conclude that these polls were either deliberately inaccurate or conducted by incompetents.

Want to preserve your sanity during this crazy election season? There is a solution:  political arbitrage. Arbitrage is the financial term for the simultaneous buying and selling of the same asset in various markets in the hope of making a profit. In political arbitrage, the profit is your sanity and the asset is a wager on who you want to lose.

With increased racial tensions spreading across the country, statues of those associated with slavery — Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals — have been either removed or vandalized. Here in the Northeast, statues of Columbus are suffering the same fate. In Boston, a statue of Columbus was beheaded, while in Middletown and New London and New Haven, his statue was removed. The city of Columbus, Ohio is considering changing its name. Yet the slave merchant who financed Yale University, Elihu Yale, remains unscathed. Why? Because he is the namesake of one of America’s most prestigious and liberal universities.

American cities are inflamed once again. The tinder being the murder of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a thuggish white police officer in Minneapolis who handcuffed him and choked him to death by placing a knee on his neck while three other police officers blandly observed. Floyd was accused of the heinous crime of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to convince Americans that they are risking their life by voting. Thus, they are recommending the increased use of mail-in voting, early voting and absentee ballots while extending the time periods before and after Election Day. But in today’s polarized political environment, it is crucial that voters believe in the integrity of the ballot box.

Testing, testing and more testing. That is the mantra health experts are telling the American people is the best way to contain the coronavirus pandemic. And they are right, up to a point. But these tests have limitations and those who expect clear-cut advice or a risk-free future are going to be disappointed.

One of the proudest accomplishments of my profession, ophthalmology, is the reduction in blindness from glaucoma. Decades ago, it was common to hear “Uncle John went blind from glaucoma.” Now such tragedies are rare. But now the insurance companies are refusing to pay for the most effective glaucoma medicines while increasing the patients’ deductibles. The result will be that more patients go blind.

In spite of a having a supermajority, Senate Democrats informed Gov. Ned Lamont that they will not support his scaled back plan to place tolls — or in Lamont’s Orwellian term “user fees” — on fourteen bridges. This is after the media, multiple civic groups and Connecticut’s corporate leadership have been cheerleading for tolls for the past year. Why?

President Trump is being savaged by all sides for his decision to remove our troops from Syria. This allowed Turkey to invade areas occupied by the Kurds, our allies in the fight against ISIS. The House of Representatives voted 354-60 to decry the policy. Newspaper editorials and armchair pundits on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC have berated the President.

My best friend from high school and I were both accepted to Ivy League schools. We declined. We both received substantial scholarships, so it wasn’t the money. But we felt more comfortable attending schools close to our rural Pennsylvania homes with both family and friends nearby. But more important, we did not feel that attending an Ivy League school would make any difference in our lives. And we were right. Both us did fine in our respective careers. But 45 years later, America has changed and getting into an elite school has become an obsession for America’s wealthy and upper middle class.