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.

A coming constitutional crisis?

The governor floated the idea yesterday of ignoring the state Supreme Court if it rules against him. The question, which has no answer at the moment, is what comes next? Would the court step in as it did in the 1970s and close the schools until the crisis is resolved? Would a Democratic Legislature move to impeach the governor? Could it? What might that do politically in a year when the entire Legislature is up for election?

In the end, a constitutional crisis is bad for every single resident of the state.

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.

The choice seems clear

Admittedly, there is no good solution to the litigation now in front of the state Supreme Court. The Christie administration’s gutting of the state school funding law has and will continue to do damage to schools — not just in the state’s cities, but in suburban districts, as well. Reinstating the money, however, will blow a hole in the state budget — a problem that will have an impact on numerous other programs.

But there is a way out of this, I think, and it starts with a reinstatement of the so-called millionaires’ tax, which had provided $1 billion in revenue while it was in place and would go a long way to plugging the $1.6 billion education-funding shortfall.

It is a point that the court — in the person of Associate Justice Barry Albin — alluded to in its questioning (from NJ Spotlight):

In one twist, he asked about the so-called millionaire’s tax at the center of political dispute for two years, not calling it that but making it clear in describing the surcharge that Christie let expire, costing the state $1 billion in revenues.

The state said it had no money to provide districts, he said, but this was not the first time it had been in a fiscal hole.

The response from Peter Verniero, the former associate justice representing the Christie administration, was silence, as Robert Braun points out:

Verniero would not answer Albin. He simply would not talk about the millionaire’s tax — in or out of court. He just ran away from the issue.

“I know you are still in a fiscal crisis,” Albin said, “but when the promise was made [to fully fund the formula in 2009], there was a $1 billion funding source and now we’re $1 billion less.”

Verniero wouldn’t comment, but Gov. Chris Christie has made it clear that he believes the surcharge on income is bad for the state. The governor believes it drives high-earners from the state and suppresses job growth, but his critics — rightly, I think — ask how the governor can ask nearly everyone else in the state to sacrifice, especially those at the lowest end of the income spectrum, while handing a gift to the handful of people affected bu the surcharge.

Consider this blog post from New Jersey Policy Perspective, the liberal think tank that has reviewed the budget, which sets the governor’s slashing of the state earned income tax credit (a 25 percent cut) alongside a $41 million tax break handed to Campbell Soup.

This cutback in tax credits for working families comes even as the Christie administration and the Legislature are expanding tax credits for corporations in New Jersey.

For example, last month the state awarded Campbell Soup a $41 million tax credit to renovate its corporate headquarters, move 49 jobs from Cherry Hill to Camden and hire 50 new employees at the Camden site over the next 10 years. The credit includes $6.3 million for new furniture. Campbell qualifies for the subsidy, officially called the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit, which is aimed at redeveloping urban centers, because its offices are within a mile of the Walter Rand Transportation Center.

The total cost to the state to fund that tax credit to Campbell Soup is nearly as much as the $45 million in savings gained by reducing the state EITC.

Raymond J. Castro, who wrote the post, asks a question that the court should ask — and may be asking, if Albin’s questioning of Verniero can be applied to the entire court:

So who needs this help the most, one of the largest corporation in America or working New Jerseyans who can barely make ends meet to support their children?

The governor, who talks a lot about making the state more affordable for the middle class, has made it obvious what he believes the answer is.

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.

Conservative consensus on education includes supposedly liberal president

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was in Princeton today touting education reform that, to put it bluntly, will do little to fix public education.

Duncan, along with President Barack Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, wants to tie teacher tenure to performance ratings — a questionable practice that is likely to elevate unreliable tests to even greater prominence and leave teachers at the whims of administrators. Tenure needs reform, but tying it and teacher pay to flawed evaluative systems will create more problems than it solves.

And yet, Duncan, who ran the Chicago school system, supports “pending legislation in Illinois that makes teacher tenure requirements more stringent and allows school districts to lay off teachers based on performance.”

“This bill could be a blueprint for the country,” said Duncan.

It is a blueprint for change, certainly, but it’s not change we should be willing to accept.

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.

It is about being gay

Rutgers student Tyler Clementi committed suicide after being outed by his roommate. State laws have been passed recently to help prevent bullying. Credit Rick Macri, (Posted to Ridgewood Patch)

The Tyler Clementi suicide was devastating — an example of how gay teens continue to be subjected to brutality, invasions of privacy and an array of intrusions that would not be tolerated were they done to any other group.

So the announcement of an indictment of the Plainsboro teen accused of videotaping Clementi with another male teen and then streaming it on another computer has led to praise from gay-rights groups and the Clementi family.

Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality, the largest gay rights organization in the state, wrote in a statement that the indictment sends a clear message to bullies across the state and Ravi’s actions were anything but a college prank gone awry.

“Today’s indictment, when combined with the recently enacted anti-bullying law which Garden State Equality steered to enactment – widely considered the strongest anti-bullying law in the country – will have an appropriate chilling effect on bullies everywhere,” he wrote.

“We continue to mourn the loss of Tyler Clementi deeply. Today is a day of justice,” he added.

Dharun Ravi, 19, was indicted on two counts of invasion of privacy, two counts of attempted invasion of privacy, two counts of seond-degree bias crimes, two counts of third-degree bias crimes. three counts of tampering with evidence, three counts of hindering his own apprehension and one count of witness tampering.

According to The Star-Ledger,

Grand jurors found Ravi attempted to mislead investigators and witnesses in various way, Kaplan said. He said the grand jury determined Ravi deleted a post on Twitter that alerted others to view Clementi and another man during their second encounter in a university dorm room on Sept. 21, 2010. Ravi also tried to convince witnesses not to testify against him and provided investigators with misleading information, Kaplan said.

Authorities say Ravi used a computer in another room to activate a hidden webcam in his dorm room in Davidson Hall, on the Busch campus in Piscataway, on Sept. 19, 2010, and streamed images of his roommate with another man. Ravi allegedly tried to spy on the roommate again two days later using the hidden webcam.

Listening to the yahoos on 101.5, however, makes it clear that there remains a huge number of people

in this state who view homosexuality as a choice and that gays should be treated to fewer protections than the rest of us.

Callers making the claim that this only became a big deal because it involved a gay student were right, but for the wrong reasons. This became a big deal — and was a bias crime — because the alleged videotaping was done as part of an antigay prank, a tactic designed to intimidate Clementi.

Critics are right when they say Ravi did not make Clementi commit suicide, but that’s beside the point. Ravi is not charged with manslaughter; he is charged with the series of activities that led up to the suicide, which would have warranted indictment even had Clementi not taken his life.

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.

There is the story and there is reality

Americans, the story goes, are tea-partiers. They want government slashed, taxes cut, have no faith in anything that government does. There is little evidence of this, of course, as Rachel Maddow pointed out last night — recent tea party events have been sparsely attended while the protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan in favor of union rights, and others backing other more progressive policies have been much larger.

Efforts like this, from the Coalition for Peace Action in Princeton, while far from scientific, offer evidence of our support for things like health care and education.

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.