Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Read these Mr. President

Some editorials on yesterday’s Hamdan decision that the president ought to read, but probably won’t:

The Boston Globe, No blank check for Bush
The Los Angeles Times, Bush vs. the Constitution
The New York Times, A Victory for the Rule of Law
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Restoring key rights
The Washington Post, A Victory for Law

And Dan Froomkin’s Whitehouse Briefing column offers a terse thumbs-up for a ruling that re-establishes constitutional checks and balances while Eugene Robinson sums it up this way: (T)he Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of ‘rule of law’ do you not understand?”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The state of the protest song

L.A. Times rock critic Ann Powers offers a trenchant look at the state of protest music — which goes beyond the usual suspects to include a rather broad and eclectic mix of artists.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Draft night in the NBA

There are a lot of ways you can judge a draft, but i think I like Dave Zirin‘s approach best.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Dispatches: Defending freedom of the press

Here’s this week’s Dispatches, on the right-wing attack on The New York Times. Here is The Washington Post on the same thing.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Pass the budget

The Record is right here. The budget standoff needs to come to an end and everyone concerned — the governor, Senate and Assembly Democrats, state Republicans and all the varied interests, taxpayers included — need to understand that the solution to years of bad budget votes will be painful. It will involve even more painful cuts than included in the proposed tab, and possibly even more tax hikes down the road.

Politicians of both parties have been balancing the budget with borrowing and gimmicks for so long that this state faces an enduring financial crisis — a crisis that would only be exacerbated in the long run by the plan floated by Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, D-Camden.

For example, the Assembly plan would carve $300 million out of a proposed $1.4 billion contribution to the state pension fund. That doesn’t sound like a bad cut — until you realize that the state hasn’t made a significant pension fund contribution in a decade and that it now faces pension obligations that total an estimated $23 billion and growing.

What’s more, there’s talk of using the penny sales tax hike to help relieve property taxes instead — although that would merely take money out of one pocket instead of another.

The sales tax is only one part of the bitter medicine and tough measures ahead if this state is to get its financial house in order. The state pension system is in desperate need of reform. State employee pay and benefits are out of control, and a new contract must be negotiated next year.

And it will require real tax reform — perhaps a shift from property taxes to income and corporate taxes, maybe a state property tax, significant government consolidation, etc. But that will have to wait until this budget is adopted.

Get on with it.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press