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.

The Democrats lost Wisconsin by losing the working class

Scott Walker is still the governor of Wisconsin.

Progressives say this proves the primacy of money in politics — and the numbers do seem to back this up — but this seems an inadequate explanation.

Conservatives say Walker’s victory in Tuesday’s recall vote prove they are riding a political wave and that voters have no use for special-interest unions. This seems an inadequate explanation, as well.

So, what happened Tuesday? Polls indicate that the Democrats failed to make a case for recall, that a majority view recall as a last resort option designed to remove a corrupt politician from office, rather than just taking out politicians on the wrong side of an issue.

And one in three union voters backed Walker, rather than Tom Barrett.

The numbers would seem counter-intuitive — a recall effort triggered by union anger over legislation that stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights losing a third of union voters to the anti-union candidate.

Again, what happened?

Robert Scheer offers the best explanation I’ve seen — that the failure in Wisconsin was a larger, systemic failure on the part of the Democrats. The reality, Scheer writes,

is that the spirit of populism has been perverted by the Republican tea party right and that Democrats are left defending government bureaucracy while remaining incapable of responding to America’s widespread economic pain.

Democrats long ago crawled in bed with finance, abandoning any presence that they were a party of workers. It may be true that Democrats will support incremental fixes, but they will not stand in the way of capital when capital wants something.

I don’t mean to minimize the impact of campaign money — it certainly plays a role — but there is a larger issue that the Democrats need to address, and until they do that they will continue to lose ground.

Jobs report: The human cost is more important than the political

You knew this story was coming, mostly because horse-race coverage is easier to do than in-depth economic coverage.

Friday’s jobs report is undoubtedly a big political story, but it is much more of a human story. The continual sputtering of the economy means that thousands remain unemployed or underemployed (I’ve just joined their ranks), or have lost their houses.

The Times has done some of these stories, but like most of the rest of the news media it has done them far too infrequently.

Quote of the day

From Michael Sandel, the Harvard philosopher, via Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times:

“The marketization of everything means that people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives. We live and work and shop and play in different places. Our children go to different schools. You might call it the skyboxification of American life. It’s not good for democracy, nor is it a satisfying way to live.”

Another small step forward

Another federal court has ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is discriminatory, leaving it likely hat the Supreme Court will be forced to respond.

The decision today said the 1996 law “discriminates against married same-sex couples by denying them the same federal benefits afforded to heterosexual couples,” according to The New York Times.

The court endorsed a 2010 ruling by a Massachusetts federal judge, who said “the law violated the equal protection clause of the constitution by denying benefits to one class of married couples — gay men and lesbians — but not to others.”

The appeals court on Thursday agreed, saying the law interfered with the right of a state to define marriage. The benefits denied to same-sex couples range from the right to file joint tax returns, which can reduce a couple’s payments, to the ability to collect death benefits.

While this is good news, it is important to remember that we are deling with a conservative court whose swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, has a mixed history on gay rights issues.

Even if this court upholds today’s decision, ending DOMA will do little to end the patchwork set of marriage laws that leave gays and lesbians far less than equal in far too many states.

Burdening future generations

Mitt Romney was infamously dismissive a while back when asked how he would address the dangerous explosion in student debt.

“It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”

The message was simple: college is a good thing, but know your place.

What’s striking is the failure of a candidate who has staked his election prospects on his economic expertise to see at access to school and the explosion of school debt are two of the central economic issues of our times.

College has been the entry ticket for many to the middle class, and access to better schools has helped create some of the (admittedly limited) class mobility that had been a hallmark of our economy in the past.

The reality is that we are looking at a massive debt bubble that is going to explode and do far more damage to the younger generations than the national deficit, saddling an entire generation with debt that will smother their economic potential.

There is an estimated $1 trillion in student debt out there, with more than half of all college students being forced to borrow to fund at least a portion of their education.

As The New York Times points out in an editorial today, about one third of all borrowers drop out of school with one I six of those defaulting on their student loans.

This will have devastating personal consequences for the students involved. Just s significantly, it will be a rain on the economy with debt repayment taking up much of the future earnings of American workers.

That’s what places this squarely on government’s plate. Only the government has the resources to step in and ensure that a) college tuition remains somewhat affordable by subsidizing public college budgets, and b) providing a much larger quantity of grant money and low-interest, federally backed loans.