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 debate without trust

We have entered the zone of pure politics, as though we’ve been operating outside of it since Gov. Christie first entered the race for New Jersey governor in 2009.

I don’t mean that as a crack against the governor, but against the entire political environment that has overtake the state since he took office and the state began operating under a divided government.

Political games are the norm these days, but the debate over the governor’s canceling of the ARC tunnel, what should be done with the ARC money allocated by the federal government and whether toll hikes approved to cover the tunnel project should be repealed has descended into pure nonsense.

What we know is this: The Democrats want to repeal the toll hikes; the governor wants them to stay in place and he wants to use the money to help replenish the Transportation Trust Fund. The Office of Legislative Services says the hikes can be repealed; the N.J. Turnpike Authority’s bond counsel says doing so will damage the authority’s ability to raise money.

The memo warns that among the potential ramifications are litigation brought against the Turnpike Authority or state by bond owners.

The Turnpike Authority may not be able to issue enough bonds to entirely fund its $7 billion Capital Improvement Project, and the ratings on the Turnpike Authority bonds would likely be lowered. The U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission could investigate or bring litigation against the Turnpike Authority based upon financial projections that included the revenue from the hikes, the memo says.

“Any such downgrading of the Bonds will increase the costs of the Authority’s future borrowings and impair the Authority’s ability to borrow needed capital funds,” it reads.

Bleak, to say the least. The question is not so much who is correct — the bond counsel’s opinion is just that, an opinion. The question is not about fact, but about policy, though the argument is being portrayed by the political ones as an argument over facts.

Let’s consider several other facts: The state Transportation Trust Fund has gone bust and someone will need to pay to refill it. We could do so by boosting the state gas tax, by using toll money or by raising general purposes taxes.

The gas tax is a use-based approach. If you drive in New Jersey, you pay the freight. The toll approach is also use-based, but targets a subset of drivers, most of whom are from out of state. The general tax approach hits everyone — including those who don’t drive. Which of these is best? Again, this is a policy debate. I would argue for the gas tax because it holds the potential of altering our driving behavior, but that is not on the table — the governor has promised to veto it. Same goes for the general tax — a problematic approach anyway.

The toll hike has been passed, is supposed to generate $1.25 billion in revenue. The governor wants to put it in the trust fund, which is used to repair and maintain roads and bridges and expand public transportation.

I’ll let you be the judge.

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.

Private funding for public schools

Let’s be serious here. This bill attempts to skirt the church-state wall by creating privately funded scholarships, but — and this is key — the state is offering tax credits to encourage it.

The program, which for the first time would provide widespread taxpayer funding for religious and private education, would not be directly funded by the state. Instead, businesses would contribute to the scholarship fund in exchange for tax credits. By its fifth year, the program could cost the state up to $800 million in lost tax revenue.

This seems a state endorsement of the plan and just another example of how the state is moving to dismantle public education. Rather than addressing the real issues — funding disparity and a segregated state — we are privatizing the funding of more and more of our educational system.

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.

Cracking down on the news in Egypt

This is always the first thing that autocrats do to protect themselves — shut down the news and you shut out the world. Shut out the world and you can pretend nothing’s happening. It’s worked elsewhere, but in Egypt it is too late. The world knows that the Mubarak regime is on the ropes.

Security forces and gangs chanting in favor of the Egyptian government hunted down journalists at their offices and in the hotels where many had taken refuge on Thursday in a widespread and overt campaign of intimidation aimed at suppressing reports from the capital.

By evening, it appeared that none of the major broadcasters were able to provide live footage of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of antigovernment protests. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya television networks said their journalists had been hounded from the street and from the vantage points above the square where cameras had been placed, and both CNN and BBC appeared to be relying only on taped footage of the square. Jon Williams of the BBC said via Twitter that Egyptian security had seized the news agency’s equipment from the Cairo Hilton “in an attempt to stop us broadcasting.”

The Egyptian state news agency had earlier asked foreign reporters and crews to move out of all the hotels near the square.

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 spread of protest

Events move quickly on the other side of the globe, but it appears that the protesters in Egypt have reached a point that the Iranian opposition failed to get to last summer. And it is having reverberations around the region.

I mentioned Jordan yesterday. Today’s paper brings word of Yemen, where

the longtime president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced a series of concessions on Wednesday that included suspending his campaign for constitutional changes that would allow him to remain president for life and pledging that his son would not seek to be his successor.

“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock,” Mr. Saleh said Wednesday during a legislative session that was boycotted by the opposition. “I present these concessions in the interests of the country. The interests of the country come before our personal interests.”

He ordered the creation of a fund to employ university graduates and to extend social security coverage, increased wages and lowered income taxes and offered to resume a political dialogue that collapsed last October over elections. In answer to opposition complaints that voter records are rife with fraud, he said he would delay April parliamentary elections until better records could be compiled.

Yemen, which is a U.S. ally, is home to a significant al Qaeda presence.

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.

What side are they on?

New Jersey politics makes little sense. Democrats are calling for a rollback of toll hikes, while the Republicans want the new tolls to fund the Transportation Trust Fund. When did the world flip upside down and Republicans suddenly supporter higher tolls?

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.