August 10, 2017--Uncle Morty's Tongue Factory

This is the same Uncle Morty who brought me into the world of Yiddishkeit--

The Tongue Factory

Most people think that the tongue sandwiches available at the Second Avenue Deli come from cows. In fact the tongue comes from Tongue Factories. I know because my Uncle Morty owned one in the 1950s. It was in the South Bronx.

He was actually in the "meat processing" business. People in this business, factory like, would process meat products--smoke hams and pigs knuckles, pickle corn beef, cure pastrami from beef briskets, and pickle tongues.

People in this business were always in a tight cash flow situation because products such as tongues needed to be bought and sold on the futures market--in order to assure a delivery of 2,000 tongues for processing and sale in December, one needed to purchase futures for them in July. At a per pound price fixed in July. Since orders for processed tongues were typically not secured so far in advance, Uncle Morty and his competitors needed to speculate that the price they were required to pay in July would be for orders they might receive in September from retail meat stores and supermarkets which in turn needed to be sold at a price by them in December that would enable the processors to turn a profit.

But since they never had the money they needed in July to secure the September futures, they had to borrow the money. Money that was secured only by hoped-for orders. In a way, Morty and his colleagues were not so different from the George Soroses of the world—just a little ahead of the arbitrage curve and of course in a very different sort of business.

As one might imagine, in an industry so unpredictable and where one's "protection" and union relations were provided for and controlled by the Mob it was not always possible (actually never possible) to borrow money from conventional places such as banks. That's where "factors" came into the picture. Factors provided unsecured, very high interest (read usurious) loans to people such as Uncle Morty, and of course to another uncle, Eli< in the garment industry since he too lived with daunting cash flow issues--he needing to buy velvet in March for clothes that would hopefully be sold in September.

Factors were not nice people. Since Uncle Morty could never secure their "loans," he was forced to give them a piece of the business--in fact a controlling piece. Off the books of course, with Eli listed as the sole owner. He lived that way for years, from month to month, eking out a modest living. But basking in the pride of owning his own business--at least on paper.

His dream was to get a big order from the A&P or Food Fair. This would be such a big order that he would at last be released from the futures-factor cycle and in fact reclaim his own business.

This fantasy came true.

One day, out of nowhere, he got a call from the Macy's food buyer (Macy's at that time had the fanciest, highest quality, highest volume meat store in the City right there in its then one flagship store at the corner of 8th Avenue and 34th Street). The most prominent New Yorkers sent their cooks there to buy prime meats; the most exclusive restaurants sent their chefs there every day to buy the most selective meats and delicacies. Macy's at the time was about much more than mass marketing Levi jeans.

So when the Macy’s meat buyer called Uncle Morty and placed an order for a thousand tongues Morty saw it as his way back to prosperity as well as a way to enter the world of "quality"--Macy's meat store after all was the place where the uptown goyim shopped.

But this magnificent life changing opportunity also presented a conundrum--because of Macy's reputation and buying power they told Uncle Morty not only how many tongues they needed but also how much per pound he could charge them. The problem--he had bought the 1,000 tongues via the futures market for more per pound than Macy's was willing to pay! They planned a special tongue event and thus demanded them from him at a price that would allow Macy's to turn a profit even after placing the tongues on sale.

So what to do. Uncle Morty was constitutionally unable to turn down an order of this kind (after all his customers were places such as Willie's Meat Market on Church Avenue in Brooklyn, where a big order was for two dozen tongues) and all he pleas about how much he had paid for the tongues and how much he would lose on every pound did not move the Macy's buyer. He had a sale planned and fixed numbers in his head. So Morty of course said yes and promised them the 1,000 tongues by next Friday.

I was working for him at the time and among my specialties was injecting the pickling liquid into the tongues. I did this by using a huge syringe attached to a pump that was inserted into a vein at the base of the tongue (the schlong—don’t ask) which then pumped in the brine. The factory was of course federally inspected--this meant that the resident inspectors were changed every six months so as to limit the possibility of corruption. Corruption included over-pumping tongues when pickling them. But of course we managed to find a way around this. Cash in blank envelopes was always helpful. That also was one of my specialties--the delivery of such envelopes.

The federal law allowed us to pump up a two pound tongue to double its size and weight. Uncle Morty, though, had something else in mind for the Macy’s tongues. While the inspectors were on a day long break, with their envelopes firmly in hand, he had me pump the tongues up to triple their original size--to six pounds per tongue. This would mean that he could deliver the tongues to Macy's at a net price that would at least allow him to break even. And perhaps more important--to enter into the goyisher world of fine meats.

The following Friday he proudly and personally delivered the 1,000 tongues to Macy's (with me driving the truck). The buyer was there to receive them and to pay Morty--unfortunately by check. He made note of the tongues colossal size--he had never seen tongues like that. Morty told him that they came from a specially bred herd and that he had made an extra (expensive) effort to secure them for the Macy's order. The buyer appeared to be impressed.

The tongues went on sale the next day and I visited to see them on display in Macy's elegantly iced cabinets. Though I was there for just half an hour, there was a run on these magnificent items: no one had ever seen tongues of this gargantuan size nor at such a price. They were selling like hot cakes.

When I reported this to Uncle Morty he was ecstatic, feeling he was on his way to full respectability and financial security. He would be able to pay his loan sharks and recover control of his business and wouldn't Macy's, coming off this great success, see him to be their provider of choice for his full range of meat products--Paramount hams (the company name), corned beef, pastrami, and of course tongues.

All was well until Monday afternoon. Back at the plant, the phone started ringing. The calls were from irate Macy's tongue customers. All complaining that when they went to steam their magnificent Paramount tongues, to prepare them for dinner (needing to stuff them, because of their size, into huge pots), when they uncovered the pots, after just a half hour of steaming, the tongues appeared to be about one third the size they were before the steaming.

The next series of calls was from the Macy's buyer--all not returned. But he did leave a message for Uncle Morty with Phyllis, Paramount's zaftig secretary (she is another story unto herself). In essence, the messages said, Don't even bother to deposit the check for the tongues since Macy's had already stopped payment.

Morty came looking for me. I was hiding in one of the huge meat lockers crouched between racks of hams ready to be moved into the smoking oven. Phyllis had alerted me that Morty was looking to blame me for over-pumping the tongues.

In fact, he was coming to hide with me in the cooler because the factors had heard about the Macy's fiasco and were on their way to collect, one way or the other. I avoided Morty and somehow he managed to fool the factors that day--they never thought to look in the freezer.

But the day of reckoning from another source soon arrived. While struggling to keep his books in balance and to have some money to pay his own apartment rent, he had neglected to pay the U.S. Government the payroll taxes he had been withholding from his employees. You can run and maybe hide from the factors, but the Feds are another matter. Even though he was just the owner on paper, he was held accountable, tried and convicted, and spent a little time in jail (the family's darkest secret).

But while Morty was "upstate" (in a "sanitarium," recovering for TB we were told), Paramount continued and did generate some income that kept his family going. All transactions were in cash; but since Uncle Morty owed the government back taxes, he of course did not want them to know about this small stream of money. Thus that cash went to my mother who kept it in her safe deposit box (along with her engagement ring).

Escorting her weekly with the cash to the Greenpoint Savings Bank on MacDonald Avenue, to stash it and occasionally to withdraw some, was among the best times of my young life. Because at long last I was involved in mobster-like activity--my career plans were beginning to take shape.

But that's yet another story!

January 29, 2014--Uncle Eli's Tongue Factory

While the Obama administration is thinking about publishing a list of individual doctors who are off the charts in the amount they bill Medicare as a way of exposing them to public scrutiny and potential prosecution if there is evidence of over-billing, Health Management Associates in Naples, Florida is already publishing data of its own about doctors affiliated with its South Florida chain of hospitals.

In Naples, according to a report in the New York Times, scorecards are posted for all attending physician to keep track of how many over 65-year-old patients they admit to the hospital each day.

Doctors hitting the target to admit at least half of the Medicare and Medicaid patients who entered via the emergency room are color-coded green; the doctors who were close to that 50 percent target are coded yellow; and those not admitting enough to the hospital are red-lighted.

Since the HMA hospitals, reflecting national changes in the way medicine is practiced, employ more and more doctors rather than just granting them attending status, pressure on these salaried doctors to increase income (and their own bonuses) by admitting more patients who have good insurance is increasing. So much so that at a HMA Naples hospital a Medicaid-elegible child was admitted with a diagnosis of having "fever" when her actual temperature was normal, 98.7; and an 18-year-old with a minor knee laceration was admitted though the wound could easily have been treated in the ER and the patient sent right home.

These are not isolated cases but rather examples of routine business.

These hospitals, like most in the nation, are technically "not-for-profit," but beyond that IRS designation, they are very much in the business of making as much money as possible so as to be able to pay doctors top dollars and hospital administrators seven-figure salaries.

It is thus no wonder that the money-driven healthcare system in the U.S. is by far the most costly in the world and for "average" people far from the best.

With thousands of lobbyists keeping the pressure on politicians not to change anything, very little does change. Big Pharma, the AMA, health care unions, medical equipment companies, hospital associations all join hands in assuring that their bottom lines, not patient care and cost-containment, are paramount. And thus far they have pretty much had their way.

Occasional exposés and law suits as the one being launched against Health Management Associates are rare and only chip away at the problem.

But there is a simple way to keep an eye on quality of service and billing practices.

Years ago, an uncle of mine owned a meat processing plant in the South Bronx. While trying to "find" myself I went to work for him and spent long days unloading truckloads of hams, pork butts, and beef tongues.

The Department of Agriculture required that the meat be inspected and, if it passed, labelled as such--USDA Inspected.

So in Uncle Eli's plant, on site, there were two full-time federal inspectors. They wandered around at will in their long white coats, randomly selecting a rack of curing tongues for careful analysis. They were incorruptible, permitted to work at any single establishment for only a month or two so as to inure them from being approached for bribes. And, in order to contain costs to the government, Uncle Eli was required to reimburse the Department of Agriculture for their salaries and benefits.

It worked rather well and this approach to safety and quality control could easily be extrapolated to all hospitals that are allowed to bill Medicare and Medicaid.

These hospitals, like Paramount Meats, should be required to have a team of on-site inspectors who they would pay for and who would keep an independent eye on services and billings. If, for example, they discovered a red light-green light system designed to defraud taxpayers (which that in fact does), they would have the power to intervene and, if necessary, report abuses to the Medicare-Medicaid Administration which in turn could refer cases to the Department of Justice.

This would lead to a significant decline in medical scams and reduce costs to those of us--really all of us--who through our taxes are paying the cost of abuse and fraud.

Doctors, then, could again be held to the Hippocratic injunction to "do no harm."