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.

Smarter than the average staffs

In the past, when the Mets have turned ugly on the field, they also have turned ugly off it as they compiled a collection bad attitudes and block heads that made it tough to view them as lovable losers.

And while he there is no guarantee that the current team will win or be likable, at least it will be brainy. And that may be all we have to look forward to.

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 long economic slog continues

If this is what recovery looks like, we should stop calling it a recovery.

The good news, as The New York Times reports, is that economy created 103,000 jobs in December; the bad news is that the number is far below what will be needed just to start chipping away at the jobs lost during this long and painful recession. And that does not take into account the reality that the economy needs to create several hundred thousand jobs monthly just to keep up with population growth.

The real problem in the recession, however, is not just unemployment, but long-term unemployment — the folks who not only have lost their jobs but remain out of work for long stretches.

The percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer edged up last month to 44.3 percent, about the same level as a year ago. Other indicators, such as the length of the average work week, remained stagnant.

All told, one in six Americans is either unemployed (either actively seeking jobs or having given up) under-employed. The brutal reality is everyone knows someone who is out of work, whether it is a former co-worker, a friend, a neighbor or a relative, and most of us know many.

And yet, we are faced with the prospect of a Republican Congress promising to grind government to a halt, ensuring that the only entity with the economic muscle to pump money into the economy — through public works jobs, unemployment insurance, aid to states to keep state and local workers employed — will remain on the sidelines.

President Obama deserves a tremendous amount of blame for this, of course, because of his reluctance to be bold and use the bully pulpit. He allowed the Republicans to gut his stimulus program, back pedaled on bailing out homeowners and has had a surprisingly difficult time explaining himself, given that his greatest strength as a campaigner was his ability to speak to voters.

The economic problems will dog us, with damaging effects throughout different sectors of the economy and the society, without much in the way of a safety net to catch us before we come crashing down. We will be forced to rely on soup kitchens and food pantries, SRO hotels and the like — or many of us will.

We may not end up wearing a barrel or riding the rails to chase migrant work, but we do face a 21st-Century version of these cliches.

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.

Translation of the funding fight

Bob Braun’s column today cut through the nonsense and offered a basic translation of the arguments made yesterday before the state Supreme Court. The issue, as he pointed out, is a political one:

Here’s the real question: Will a court under siege buy into the governor’s political views about spending or will it find the collective nerve to tell Chris Christie his oath of office requires him to obey all constitutional mandates, including the one to maintain a thorough and efficient school system?

It’s simple: Without the justices’ permission, the governor’s budget, adopted by the Legislature, cut $1 billion from a school aid formula the court, just a year before, ruled constitutional if funded. To cut that billion, Christie—and lawmakers—had to make choices.

Like not raising taxes on rich people. A political choice.

Braun’s point, essentially, is that all budgeting choices are political choices, meaning they come down to specific policies and priorities. The governor opted to slash school spending rather than ask New Jersey’s top tax bracket to pay a bit more to fund government.

As Braun points out — and I’ve written numerous times — our elected officials at all levels of government balance myriad interests in crafting budgets. What is a permissible level of taxation? Who should pay? How? What kinds of programs should we provide? Which should get more money and which should get less? These are political questions and need to be hashed out in the political arena, honestly and openly.

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.

Framing public workers

It is interesting the way in which every story on the state pension problems are framed. The assumption in every single one is that the problems stem from the system and the workers and that the failure of elected officials to 1.) be honest and conservative in their estimates of the pension system’s long-term value and 2.) make the requisite payments into the system really is only a minor failing.

But the reality is that the last time the state actually paid what it owed to the system was in 1992 — under Jim Florio. Seven governors and Legislatures of both parties have been shorting the system over the last 18 years. That includes $3.1 billion this year by Chris Christie.

The massive shortfall in what we expect to have to pay and what we will have in the bank to distribute has nothing to do with the people who will get the pensions and everything to do with the people managing our state and local budgets.

Does this mean that we should not look at the pension system to determine whether the payouts going forward make sense? No. Of course we should. But we have to be honest about what created the mess before we can move forward.

The other frame is that public workers are robbing the rest of us and we should tear them down. That’s just a foolish race to the bottom. Instead, we should be fighting to rebuild our own pension and health programs so that we get what the public worker gets. But that is a debate for another post.

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.

Alomar enters Hall (won’t wear Mets hat)

He failed miserably when he arrived at Shea, but there should never have been any doubts that Robbie Alomar was going to the Hall of Fame. Alomar was one of the best to ever play his position, better than anyone who played in her era and today’s announcement was a year overdue.

As for the others: I won’t begrudge Bert Blyleven’s entrance, though I am not sure he belongs in the hall. Two others Jack Morris, a top-notch pitcher, and shortstop Barry Larkin are close. I would vote for Larkin, who was the best all-around shortstop of his era — the years between Ripken/Ozzie Smith and the current Jeter/A-Rod group. Morris is a closer call, like Blyleven, because his numbers do not jump out and say Hall. But there were few pitchers on his level during his prime and he was a gutty winner.

So congrats to Alomar and Blyleven.

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.