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 NBA should be grateful for Steve Nash

The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement about two hours ago that shows that not all NBA players are callous homophobes.

NBA legend Steve Nash has partnered with HRC in a new video for the group’s New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign. In the video, Nash talks about the growing number of professional athletes who are speaking out in support of marriage equality, saying, “I’m proud to be one of them.”  The video can be viewed at www.hrc.org/NY4marriage.

Nash stands out from the rest of his league for his progressive impulses — which he has never shied away from. As much as Kobe Bryant and Joachim Noah deserve the opprobrium sent their way, Nash deserves gratitude and respect.

  • 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.

Another day another slur in the NBA

In the macho culture of American sports, it’s apparently OK to shout homophobic slurs. I don’t mean that it is approved or condoned by the league — $100,000 fine to Kobe Bryant shows where the league stands on it — but just one month after the Bryant incident comes one involving Bulls power-forward Joakim Noah.

The exchange occurred after Noah was whistled for his second foul with more than six minutes remaining in the first quarter. Noah was whistled for an over the back call after attempting to tap in a Carlos Boozer miss. Noah came from behind Heat forward LeBron James to tap the ball near the cylinder and made contact with his body. After briefly arguing the call, Noah headed straight for the Bulls bench and began barking at someone seated behind him and to his right.

Noah then appeared to yell a string of profanities and finished with what appears to be the exact phrase that Bryant was fined for using. The only difference: Noah was not addressing one of the officials.

The league has a problem, whether it wants to admit it or not, and fines are not going to be enough to fix it.

  • 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.

An offensive defense of military spending

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who had been advocating cuts in military spending, is now counseling against significant cuts saying that reductions would leave the nation vulnerable.

Is he kidding? United States military spending accounts for 43 percent of all military spending world wide and more than the next 14 countries combined. In fact, we could cut our spending by a third and still outspend the next biggest spender by a 5-to-1 ratio, while accounting for $1 of every $3 spent on defense world wide.

The Gates comments, made at the University of Notre Dame commencement, have nothing to do with maintaining an adequate level of defensive readiness and everything to do with fear — fear on the part of the military-industrial complex that it will lose its privileged place in Washington and its access to American tax dollars, fear on the part of politicians who count on defense contractors for campaign funding and the need to sow fear among voters who otherwise would prefer to see defense spending cut and social programs left in place.

Gates’ comments unfortunately signal a likelihood that defense spending is going to be left at historically high levels even as our friends in Washington talk about shrinking government and the programs that help those of us who live in communities like South Brunswick, Princeton and New Brunswick will be gutted to make the bond markets happy.

  • 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.

Going after the gas companies

Legislation that would cut aid to oil companies appears dead, thanks to a coalition of Republicans and oil state Democrats. A minority of Senators, in fact, have scuttled legislation that would end subsidies for the most profitable industry in the United States.

The lessons from this?

  • Big oil — and big business in general — has far more power than voters and consumers, thanks in part to the industry’s ability to spend massive amounts of money on political campaigns and buy candidates’ loyalty.
  • The Senate system is undemocratic, both because it gives as much power to small states with little population as it does to larger states, and because it allows the filibuster and secret holds.
  • We need a massive realignment of our politics that shifts power back to the citizenry — reform of the campaign finance system, constitutional checks on corporations, reconfiguration of the Senate, an end to the electoral college and to the two-party system.

The most important lesson, however, is that we cannot wait for government to fix things. Our elected representatives only react to threats to their jobs so we have to organize (civil disobedience and lobbying) and run aggressive primary and third-party campaigns designed to do what the Tea Party has done to the Republicans — pull the Democrats to the left.

  • 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.

The selling of schools

So this is what we’ve come to — putting our school properties up for sale because we refuse to commit resources to education.

The South Brunswick School District — like far too many others in the state — is looking into selling advertising space on school property to generate revenue, an effort that has been made necessary because of state budget cuts and a general unwillingness to consider real school funding reform.

I can’t blame the district for moving in this direction, even if I find the notion of commercialized school space deplorable. If the state is not going to follow through on its obligation to make sure that all schools have the needed funding, then local districts really have no choice.

The problem is part of the larger failure in the United States to commit real money to schools. Rather than fix the problems we have in our educational system, we employ gimmicks like the advertising gambit and gut the public education system with charters and vouchers and a slew of rote tests that measure nothing.

Our public schools are our most important resource, the one unifying civic institution in a fragmenting nation. But we have little concern for that. Instead, we are prepared to gut them and turn them into just another area where commerce can be done.

  • 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.