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.

Using procedure to oppose procedure: Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t vote?

I just want to understand this: Susan Collins plans to vote against sending the Defense Authorization bill — and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell — to the full Senate because she dislikes the procedural manuevering by Democrats. I’d be more inclined to agree with her criticism were she not as guilty as anyone in the Senate of using procedural manuevers to get what she wants.

  • 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.

Endless revision: An interview with Philip Schultz

Here is my story on Philip Schultz, in advance of the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival on 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.

Politics over sound policy

The Star-Ledger makes it clear that yesterday’s vote on women’s health funding was purely political — which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the escapades in Trenton.

Gov. Chris Christie has portrayed himself as a tough budget sheriff, but it is clear if you look at the spending decisions in his budget that ideology is a determining factor behind nearly every dollar included or excluded from the budget.

That includes pension reform and his assault on public education, his decision to cut family-planning funding and more things than I can list.

Christie is no more a straight-shooter than Jon Corzine. He’s just ballsier.

  • 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.

Ledger touts conservative study: Credentials matter as much as affiliation

The breathless reporting of studies like these drive me crazy. It’s not the conclusion that I question — there is no doubt that people are leaving New Jersey — but the motivation behind these studies and the failure of major news organizations to call the groups that author them what they are.

Let’s put the facts on the table: The Tax Foundation may be nonpartisan, as it claims, but it is not nonideological. Just one look at its board of directors — high-level corporate officers, former members of or advisors to the Bush administration and the McCain campaign and a former Republican Congressman — and you can see the genesis of my concern.

As I said, the results may be spot on, but the characterization of the organization pushing the study is misleading. Imagine if the Economic Policy Institute or the Center for Economic Policy Research were described only as nonpartisan research groups — which they are. What would conservatives do?

  • 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.