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.

Prisoners of politics

President Barack Obama continues to show how little he values civil liberties. Elected on a promise to close the Guantanamo prison and end the Bush approach to terror suspects, Obama has instead opted to embrace Bush-era policies

According to a report by Pro Publica, the online investigative group, Obama plans to sign an executive order that

establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

The executive order offers better protections than currently exist, but continues the questionable detention practice and sets precedent for maintaining an array of executive maneuvers that sidestep civil liberties protections.

Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Association, agreed that “more review is better.” But he said that an executive order would only “normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies,” that were set in place by the Bush administration.

I don’t remember electing Obama so that he could be an extension of the Bush presidency.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Giving states the veto is a bad idea

I would dismiss this as a joke, but given the looniness we’ve seen grow on the issue of federal power it obviously is not a joke.

The this, in this case, is an amendment that would grant state legislatures the power to repeal federal law — two-thirds of all state legislatures would need to vote for repeal. It has the backing of folks in 12 states (the story says legislatures, including New Jersey, when it needs to be made clear that full legislatures are not on board in most cases) and some in Congress — which leaves me wondering if anyone is thinking clearly out there.

The amendment is being pushed as a way to trim federal sails and force national lawmakers to consider the impact of their actions on the states, which sounds logical in theory but would create chaos in practice and do little more than further empower small states and, more ominously, make progressive reform impossible.

As with the filibuster, the threat of a repeal vote might be enough to stall action — consider what might have happened to civil rights legislation had this been in effect in the mid-1960s. The reality is that the federal government has no choice but to step in sometimes — to address questions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, to impose regulatory rules that can act as a baseline and so on.

Giving a veto to the states will create a downward pull on all of these issues, because there will be no incentive for states with the weakest environmental regulations, those with out workplace safety laws, without a minimum wage, etc., to improve, no minimum standards to meet, etc. States with effective laws will have little choice but to gut their own regulatory apparatus to keep business from fleeing to the states of least resistance.

This craziness, of course, is brought to you by the same people who believe that democracy would be enhanced by taking the right to vote for U.S. Senators away from the people and handing it to the very state legislatures that have proven inept and corrupt. (Does anyone really think that the people we send to Trenton would do a better job picking Senators than the voters? Does anyone think that the people in Trenton will be thinking of us and not of themselves?)

  • 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.

Quote of the day, from The Limits of Power

A quotation from Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power:

Great powers wage “small wars” not to defend themselves but to assert control over foreign populations. Denominating an operation “Iraqi Freedom” or “Enduring Freedom” does not alter that reality. Historically, that is, “small wars” are imperial wars. The wars in which the United States currently finds itself engaged are no exception.

(Bacevich, The Limits of Power, p. 141)
  • 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.

Civil rights for gays and lesbians!

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is history and gays and lesbians can serve in the military — not a great choice, but one that confers on them the full rights of citizenship. Well, all but one right — it’s time to move forward and legalize same-sex marriage.

  • 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.

Political World: Dog park purchase made sense

The latest South Brunswick version of my Political World column can be found here.

  • 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.