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.

Imposing democracy on a shadow government: Shining a light on the foreign policy establishment

More document leaks, courtesy of WikiLeaks — a new defender of democracy.

The response from official Washington? Typical McCarthyite drivel. Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, offered this — which is typical of the comments offered by the people who run our foreign policy.

The people who are leaking these documents need to do a gut check about their patriotism. And I think they’re enjoying the attention they’re getting. But frankly, it’s coming at a very high price in terms of protecting our men and women in uniform.

Of course the people in Washington don’t like Wikileaks. It damages their monopoly on information and their ability to perpetuate their own little worlds.

(Read Andrew Bacevich‘s book, The Limits of Power, to get a better handle on the issue.)

  • 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.

Sorry for the light week

It’s been a light posting week, but you can blame the holiday, the triptophane, galley corrections for the book and the impending launch of South Brunswick Patch. It’s been busy.

But I’ll try to get some blogging in over the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving and condolences to those of you bold enough — or stupid enough — to venture into the maw of Black Friday.

  • 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.

Battling over bad reforms

I’ve written about this often, so I’ll just say that the battle between the governor and the state Legislature over the proposed tool kits — “I say, ‘pass mine,’ one says; ‘no, pass mine,’ the other chimes in” — is pretty meaningless. Real reforms will do more than nibble around the edges of the problem and scapegoat public workers.

  • 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.

I knew they couldn’t be that bad

The Knicks are proving that this is going to be a long and eventful season. Following up an awful six-game losing streak that dropped them to 3-8, the team ran off three wins on the West Coast — an almost unheard of feat in recent Knicks’ years.

Good things abounded — including the play of point guard Ray Felton and forward Danilo Galinari and the emergence of Ronny Turiaf as a defensive stabilizer.

So, it seems pretty clear that this team is not going to be quite as bad as it looked a week ago, though I’m not sure we are looking at a team that will win much more than 40 games. Given the last half-dozen years or so, I’ll take it.

  • 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.

Finally, a uniter

OK, I’m sure this is not what Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have meant by uniting left and right, but the Transportation Security Administration’s attack on the Bill of Rights is bridging the gap in a way that no one could have intended.

Gov. Chris Christie is just the latest high-profile politician to climb on board, joining a bipartisan group along with civil libertarians on the left and libertarian right to call on the TSA to find another way to screen passengers instead of subjecting them to an invasive and potentially embarrassing full-body scan or pat down.

Maybe, just maybe, the TSA will listen.

  • 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.