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.

Why Obama?

I voted for Barack Obama, with reservations, in 2008. I knew he wasn’t a progressive, but I’d hoped that, in the face of a near-economic depression, he might follow Franklin Roosevelt’s path and become more progressive when he entered office.

I knew it was a long shot and I had no illusions.

But I’m a minority among progressives, with too many still making excuses for what has proven to be a failed presidency. Obama has, to date, done little to create jobs, little to reverse the nation’s economic decline and has, instead, opted to make Wall Street whole.

And while he blames Republicans for blocking more progressive reforms, it has been the president himself who has turned his nose to his left flank. He removed single-payer from the table before the health-care debate began, offered a stimulus plan that was too small by half even before it was watered down by Senate Democrats and moved to address deficit concerns well before it was economically logical.

But we still get defenders from the left and in the media of both his economic and national security policies. And we still hear the tired argument — if not Obama, then who? The argument is the flip-side of the Anybody But Bush movement that began percolating — unsuccessfully – in 2003 and 2004. it is based on the notion that the left must give its unconditional support to the president or someone like Michele Bachman or Mitt Romney will win the White House and things will really get bad.

That is a fear-based argument that let’s the president off the hook for his own failings and marginalizes the left at a time when the country needs to hear legitimate and detailed critiques from the president’s left flank.

We’re now two and a half years into the Obama presidency. We remain mired in the recession he inherited from his predecessor, with unemployment hovering at between 9 percent and 10 percent and the ranks of the long-term unemployed and underemployed being much higher. Foreclosures continue to rise, the health-care industry remain in charge and our infrastructure is crumbling. We’re engaged in three wars in four countries (or is it four wars in five countries?) and have a growing national security state and expanding imperial presidency.

At some point, the president needs to take responsibility for this.

I’m not advocating that the left not vote for Obama in 2012. But the left’s votes should not come cheaply. And it should not remain silent as the president drifts farther to the right. Enough is enough.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Quote of the day: Gay-marriage edition

From yesterday’s New York Times:

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

About that draft pick

And, to the Knicks….

Iman Shumpert of Georgia Tech.

Cue the moaning and booing fans.

I guess at pick no. 17, we shouldn’t care. But Iman Shumpert was a player most scouts and draft watchers had falling to the second round.

And they passed on Chris Singleton, who the same scouts view as a lock-down defender.

Shumpert is also supposed to be a good defender, so maybe this is just a lot of unnecessary jabbering.

But this is the Knicks, a team that has proven that when a mistake can be made it will be made.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.