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.

Sunny approach to power

Slowly, we’re starting to see property owners with large acreage add solar generators, as the Lawrenceville School and Dow Jones are doing. It is a positive trend, though one that has moved far too slowly to address the real dangers of climate change. This is where a real government incentive could work, and create new jobs to boot.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Snow bound

The snow has piled up outside — so much so, in fact, that the dogs are having great difficulty navigating their way around the yard.

My brother, who lives less than a half mile away, was trapped here last night, creating an impromptu sleepover (my brother’s three kids, my sister’s three, six adults, two dogs) and a lot of activity in the morning. Mark finally made it out of the driveway and home to take care of his dog (and get my nephew’s DS charger) and my brother-in-law is outside with the snow shovel as I sit at this computer getting ready to launch another Patch site (lawrenceville.patch.com).

I can see through the window the wind blowing snow from the roof and I’m hoping the weathermen are right about the rest of the week — sun and rising temperatures. I don’t know why I haven’t fled south to avoid this stuff.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Tell me again who’s at fault for the pension mess

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

The state treasurer announced today that the state pension shortfall is at an all-time high.

As reported by The Star-Ledger, the shortfall grew by more than $8 billion over the last fiscal year to about $53.9 billion — an astronmical number that dwarfs the state’s annual budget. All told, the state pension system, the story says, “is 62 percent funded.”

The report offered the Christie administration an opportunity to continue its push for pension reform, which State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff said include “rolling back a 9 percent increase in pensions given by the Legislature in 2001, and upping workers’ contributions to 8.5 percent across the board,” according to the paper.

“Unchecked, the cost of this impossible burden will fall not just on the taxpayers of today, but on future generations of New Jerseyans,” he said.

That governor, he plays hard ball. He also is proving to be an ideological hack who seems unconcerned with the facts of the pension crisis. Remember, the governor followed in the footsteps of nearly every predecessor going back to the early days of the Whitman administration by failing to pay into the pension system. The $3.1 billion pension payment he didn’t make accounts for nearly 40 percent of the growth in the unfunded obligation.

And the governor, as Chris Hayes pointed out the other night on Countdown, seems prepared to default on the state’s obligations to its workers — cops and firefighters, teachers and roadworkers, secretaries and others — rather than a) asking taxpayers for more money or b) getting in the bondholders’ faces.

As Dean Baker, an economist with the left-leaning Center for Economic Policy and Research, point out, the pensions are contractual obligations, a promise made to the people who work for the various levels of government in the state. Threatening default — or at least alluding to it — is irresponsible and morally questionable. It is blackmail, plain and simple, and just more evidence that this supposedly no-nonsense governor is really just a bully.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Doggie Diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie Of dogs, Doty and description


Mark Doty’s book on description — The Art of Description — is such a good read even my dogs liked it, or I think they liked it. They certainly enjoyed ripping through the pages.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

The reform governor needs to be reformed

Logic 101:

If reforming government requires full disclosure and accountability and the governor is connected to a private fundraising group that solicit donations from people seeking favors/jobs/rule changes from the state, then the governor cannot be a reformer.

Just saying.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.