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.

Question for Hall of Fame voters

With Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro trapped in Hall limbo with Pete Rose, we are now facing the prospect that the greatest hitters of the last two decades are likely not to make the Hall.

Consider the man who announced his retirement today, Manny Ramirez. There is no doubt that Ramirez is one of the greatest hitters to ever step in a batter’s box — he hit for average, power and was a flat-out RBI machine for the bulk of his career.

The same can be said for Gary Sheffield and, of course, Barry Bonds, who faces all kinds of legal woes.

Here is a list of the Top 20 homerun hitters in baseball history:

1.	Barry Bonds	762	L	HR Log
2.	Hank Aaron+	755	R	HR Log
3.	Babe Ruth+	714	L	HR Log
4.	Willie Mays+	660	R	HR Log
5.	Ken Griffey	630	L	HR Log
6.	Alex Rodriguez (35)	615	R	HR Log
7.	Sammy Sosa	609	R	HR Log
8.	Jim Thome (40)	589	L	HR Log
9.	Frank Robinson+	586	R	HR Log
10.	Mark McGwire	583	R	HR Log
11.	Harmon Killebrew+	573	R	HR Log
12.	Rafael Palmeiro	569	L	HR Log
13.	Reggie Jackson+	563	L	HR Log
14.	Manny Ramirez (39)	555	R	HR Log
15.	Mike Schmidt+	548	R	HR Log
16.	Mickey Mantle+	536	B	HR Log
17.	Jimmie Foxx+	534	R	HR Log
18.	Willie McCovey+	521	L	HR Log
	Frank Thomas	521	R	HR Log
	Ted Williams+	521	L	HR Log

Seven of them have a steroid asterisk next to their name (or would have were it to exist). Add Sheffield to the list of plus-500 homer guys with an asterisk and then consider this: Only three power hitters of the last 20 years — Ken Griffey Jr., Jim Thome and Frank Thomas — are without asterisks and there are writers who question Thome and Thomas’ credentials. (This doesn’t take into account the pitchers, by the way.)

I am not advocating for voting all of these guys into the Hall, but we have to address this in some way. The reality is that the game was badly tainted by the accusations and its best players, for the most part, were all involved.

So, here is my question: Can we continue to ignore these hitters without ignoring an entire era?

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.

MLB’s opening week will be forgotten in September

Take a look at the standings today in the American League East:

EAST	W	L	PCT	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	DIFF	STRK	L10
Baltimore	5	1	.833	–	2-1	3-0	29	16	+13	Won 1	5-1
NY Yankees	4	2	.667	1	4-2	0-0	35	30	+5	Won 1	4-2
Toronto	4	2	.667	1	4-2	0-0	35	19	+16	Lost 1	4-2
Tampa Bay	0	6	.000	5	0-5	0-1	8	27	-19	Lost 6	0-6
Boston	0	6	.000	5	0-0	0-6	16	38	-22	Lost 6	0-6

Now, take a look at how the same division finished a year ago:

*-Tampa Bay	96	66	.593	–	49-32	47-34	802	649	+153	Won 2	5-5
y-NY Yankees	95	67	.586	1	52-29	43-38	859	693	+166	Lost 2	3-7
Boston	89	73	.549	7	46-35	43-38	818	744	+74	Won 2	5-5
Toronto	85	77	.525	11	45-33	40-44	755	728	+27	Won 1	8-2
Baltimore	66	96	.407	30	37-44	29-52	613	785	-172	Lost 1	5-5

What should stand out is that the two teams at the bottom of the heap so far this year are the teams and the top and the bottom of the heap. Boston and Tampa were picked by most baseball folks to battle for the division lead, while the Orioles, the perennial basement dwellers, were picked to finish last once again. After a week, however, the roles are reversed.

The Orioles are the surprise team so far. And yet, it really does not matter. The chances that the Orioles will maintain this level of play all season and contend in what many believe to be the toughest division in baseball are slim. And the chances that two teams that have deep rosters and have been among their division leaders for the last three or four years (longer for the Sox) are even slimmer.

I still expect this to be a three-team race between Tampa Bay, Boston and the Yankees, with the Blue Jays hanging along the periphery and the Orioles’ hot start forgotten by the All-Star break.

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.

Name-calling is not an argument

You don’t have to like your political opponents. You don’t have to speak well of them. You might even call them names, if you like.

But you should not pretend that doing so advances your argument. Someone should tell the governor that.

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 on the class war

It was Warren Buffet who said that America is involved in a class war, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

The numbers are staggering, as Robert Scheer points out today on Truthdig:

In one of the best studies of this growing gap in income, economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that during Clinton’s tenure in the White House the income of the top 1 percent increased by 10.1 percent per year, while that of the other 99 percent of Americans increased by only 2.4 percent a year. Thanks to President Clinton’s deregulation and the save-the-rich policies of George W. Bush, the situation deteriorated further from 2002 to 2006, a period in which the top 1 percent increased its income 11 percent annually while the rest of Americans had a truly paltry gain of 1 percent per year.

The upshot is that the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the wealth. But few are talking about it.

Instead, we have a debate over how best to cut programs for the middle class and the poor so that we can plug a hole in our budget and not whether to ask the rich to pay. From Scheer, again:

Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

President Barack Obama is blaming political games for the budget stalemate, refusing to accept responsibility for his enabling of the so-called budget hawks. He should have been fighting hard for a real stimulus that could have jump-started the economy and not just a stop-gap designed to avert disaster. And rather than touting his accomplishments at a time when unemployment remains unacceptably high, he should have been pushing hard for aid to states to keep public workers employed while also empowering labor.

The Republicans make no bones about their priorities. They want to slash spending and gut what’s left of the social safety net. And they want to do this even as they find ways to give money to the people who already have it.

And they are likely to win, thanks to the timidity of the Democrats.

Despite the alarming projections of how the House Republican budget would harm the country, it’s the Democrats who have been on the defensive during the budget debate, principally because President Obama has declined to seriously engage in the discussions or outline an alternative narrative on the economy that is distinct from the GOP. Though they hold only one house of Congress, House Republicans act like they’re in control of the entire government, with little pushback from the White House or Senate Democrats. Both parties now endorse the idea that spending cuts are the best cure for our ailing economy, even though there is no evidence that is the case.

Obama has said that he was perceived as too much of a “tax and spend liberal Democrat” in the last election, so his administration has moved to the right as a result—despite the fact that poll after poll shows that the public believes the unemployment rate is a far more pressing problem than the deficit. “The White House, in particular, has effectively surrendered in the war of ideas,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote recently. “It no longer even tries to make the case against sharp spending cuts in the face of high unemployment.” Throughout this budget fight, we’ve been having the wrong economic debate, as my colleague Katrina vanden Heuvel noted this week. Both our political and media class are guilty of focusing obsessively on spending cuts while ignoring the public’s overriding priority: jobs.

But then, the Democrats long ago ceased to represent workers and the middle class. They are beholden to the same money men as the Republicans. The class war is over and the rich have won.

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.

Obama and best of the worst

Barack Obama announced yesterday that he will seek re-election in 2012 and, like Ted Rall, I can’ for the life of me think of why I should care.

We are now nearly 27 months into his presidency and the great liberal hope has proven to be Clinton redux — a corporate stooge in thrall to the military-industrial complex.

Evidence:

A health-care law that forces people to give the health insurance companies money — a law, in fact, modeled on the flawed one put in place by former Gov. Mitt Romney (and perennial Republican presidential candidate) in Massachussetts.
A weak financial reform bill that has done little to prevent Wall Street speculators to get back to their old games.
An expanded war in Afghanistan that has been expanding into Pakistan, continued war in Iraq, military intervention (short of war) in Libya without Congressional approval.
Continuation of Bush-era policies on detention, Guantanamo, interrogation.
A half-measure stimulus and a cave-in to Republicans on the deficit.
Support for nuclear power and clean coal and a hands-off approach to Big Oil’s requests to expand domestic and deepwater drilling — even after the 2010 BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
An array of broken promises on labor rights issues, tax policy (extending the Bush tax cuts even as he agreed to tackle the deficit).

And yet, Obama is likely to garner support from a good portion of the left because of the downward pressure our first-past-the-post puts on our electoral system. By all rights, the left should walk away from Obama; it’s the only thing we have left and the only way we will be able to gain any leverage in the policy arena.

But we won’t. The memory of eight years of Bush remains too strong, so the lesser-of-two-evil argument is going to come back, going to play a major role in the discussion on the left flank of the political discussion. Consider the alternative, the argument will go, and it will be effective — there is not a Republican in the race or on its periphery (i.e., Gov. Chris Christie) who warrants a shot at the Oval Office.

Progressives may not like the alternatives, may indeed opt for Obama over Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, et al. But progressives should also make it clear that any support given to Obama comes with a price tag — moving progressive goals to the top of the agenda.

More importantly, we need to stop thinking of the electoral arena as the only outlet for political action. It cannot be about candidates and money, but about direct action and protest and the creation of a moral momentum that forces the larger political class to listen.

The history of our political movements makes it clear that it is our only hope. Direct action — sit-down strikes, general strikes, marches, boycotts — forced issues like civil and labor rights onto the table, pushing the politicians to act. Protests against Vietnam, including the flight to Canada by those evading the draft, forced politicians to find a way to end that nightmare.

We have hit the same point today.

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.