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.

Welcome to triangulation, Obama-style

Gas prices are spiking and drivers are angry, a situation that demands both a political response and leadership.

Too bad, President Barack Obama is only offering the former. He announced today that he would make it easier to drill for oil on public lands, particularly in Alaska, a sop to both his GOP critics and selfish drivers who refuse to alter their own habits to address falling supply.

There are a lot of reasons that U.S. gas prices are high — Middle East instability, demand that has been growing without thought of supply, greed in the executive suites, unnecessary federal subsidies and, yes, federal and state regulations.

Some of these causes need to be addressed and can be — reducing demand by changing our driving habits and land-use patterns is imperative and should top the list along with finding alternative fuel sources.

Giving in to the drill-baby-drill crowd, however, is not something that makes sense on any level — the supply would be a short-term boost that would do little for several years, which is both useless in terms of prices at the pump and counterproductive as a long-term strategy.

That hasn’t stopped some environmental groups from signing on — even though, you know they would screaming bloody murder had this been ordered by the Bush administration.

The reality is this would have been bad policy under Bush and it is bad policy under Obama.

Push back on charters from NJSBA

The New Jersey School Boards Association is asking the state to give voters a say in the development and budgeting for charter schools.

The organization “overwhelmingly” backed a resolution from Princeton that ask that the state change rules governing charter schools so that the schools would need the same kind of voter backing that new public schools require. Princeton already is home to one charter school and a second one has been approved that will draw from Princeton, South Brunswick and West Windsor-Plainsboro.

The vote is the first major challenge to the charter school movement and could give supporters of proposed charter reform legislation the boost they need to get their bill to the governor’s desk. While there is little chance that charter-backer Gov Chris Christie would sign the legislation, it would make public the basic issues at play in the debate over charters.

The fact is that local tax money is used to fund charters, but the entity elected to manage the public’s money — the school board — has been forced to sit on the sidelines as charter schools have popped up around the state. Some survive and thrive, others muddle along and many fail, but no one other than the state Department of Education has any say over whether they are needed.

The legislation proposed by state Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) would change that. Before the NJSBA vote, it seemed unlikely the bill would go anywhere, even though Buono is the chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee. Maybe this will alter the balance.

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.

More extensives tax reforms needed in New Jersey

Gov. Chris Christie’s slash-and-burn budgeting appears to be having little impact at the local level — or at least not the impact promised.

South Brunswick, for instance, is expected to raise its municipal tax rate almost 10 percent, on top of a big increase in school taxes that will cost taxpayers a combined $400 a year (the owner of a house assessed at $200,000).

And South Brunswick is not the only community looking at a tax increase. East Brunswick, despite reducing spending, is looking at a tax hike, as are numerous towns throughout the region — the Princetons, Lawrence, East Windsor — and the state.

The governor says the property tax hikes are the fault of local officials, but when so many towns are cutting spending and still ending up with tax hikes one has to wonder if there isn’t some larger issue at play.

My sense is that the system has collapsed. I’ve been complaining that the state’s government structure was unsustainable and broken, but it has been functioning. That seems no longer to be the case. The governor is proposing a tool kit that contains some nominally useful tools but still leaves the basic set of problems in place. A more comprehensive structural change is needed that includes a review of the corporate and income tax rates, the inefficiency of having 566 towns, nearly 600 school districts and more than 1,400 total taxing districts, and a frank discussion about priorities.

New Jersey continues to provide some useful and necessary services. We could save money if we were willing to further gut our social safety net, but then we would put our residents in the same position as my friend Lynn, who moved to North Carolina and has now been kicked off the unemployment insurance roll because the governor down there views unemployment insurance as an incentive to laziness. That seems a dubious tradeoff.

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.

Reprieve for Princeton couple points out 2nd-class citizenship of gays, lesbians

Henri Velandia and Josh Vandiver of Princeton should not have to prove the stability and strength of their relationship in court, but that is what they still have to do.

Velandia, a Venezuela native, faces deportation even though the 27-year-old Velandia got legally married to Vandiver in Connecticut last year. At today’s hearing, the immigration judge delayed a decision on Velandia’s fate until December, saying that federal marriage laws could change.

So, good news today, but not all that good. In the wake of the self-congratulatory response much of the nation had to the killing of a terrorist proved we can do what we set out to do, the president said — it underscores the incompleteness of our national project.

We are a classless society that is badly divided into classes — gay and straight, black, white and other, rich and poor — and class matters greatly. Gays, lesbians and the transgendered do not have the same rights as the rest of us — not in the military, not in marriage and not in immigration.

And that must change and change quickly.

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.

Someone is getting paid!

Corporate profits are up and the economy is allegedly starting to grow. But the unemployment rate remains painfully high and wages are stagnant.

At least the CEOs are getting paid.

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.