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.

New face, same failed war

This is a dicey one, because there must be dissent within the war council and any administration, but it is clear that public ridicule of one’s bosses is not the best way to get your point across. In any case, this was not about the conduct of the war — which is, in many ways, a Gen. McChrystal production — but about the president asserting his authority.

The saddest part of this mess, however, is this:

Mr. Obama stressed that the change in leadership did not signal a shift in his overall war strategy in Afghanistan, where thousands of new American troop levels have been arriving in recent months among increasing casualties and growing questions about the progress of the war.

“It is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy,” Mr. Obama said.

In the end, this is the real issue. We need a change in strategy — i.e., we need to get out. The Afghanistan war has been a disaster and will remain so. Our best hope for stabilizing the region is to leave.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Lead yourself

Several years ago, Neil Young issued a solid, if overrated, musical polemic directed against the Bush White House and its ideology of endless war called Living with War. The disc worked, as far as it went, full of piss and vinegar, as the saying goes, but lacking the kind of poetry that has made his best work remain timely and relevant in changing times.

In this respect, however, the record was no different than most protest records — think of “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire or much of the Country Joe and the Fish catalogue. One song on the record, however, stood out for me as capturing the cultural zeitgeist. “Looking for a Leader,” with its bald desire to have someone rise up and save us, some kind of political Christ figure who could lead us to a new promised land (or, given that this is Neil Young, back into the mythical American past), encapsulates our tendency to demand action through our own paralysis, the idea that all it will take is the right man or woman in the White House (or State House or mayor’s house) to make things right and restore America’s lost prestige and power.

One just has to look at our castrated left and its relationship to Barack Obama to see the devastating consequences of this kind of political sycophancy.

But this post is not really about the left and Obama. It is about Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the potential hijacking by the military of Afghan War policy. McChrystal did something that generals are not supposed to do: He spoke openly and derisively of the nation’s civilian military leadership. McChrystal may be the “man” in Afghanistan, but he reports to Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and, ultimately, to President Barack Obama.

I was watching the news last night when the issue came up — should Obama fire the general? My dad, who is in from Las Vegas, let slip with, “maybe the general should fire Obama,” as though he had the authority to do so (a strange comment from my dad, who dislikes Obama but likes to offer a veneer of rationality and moderation in his political thinking). My dad’s comment, though, comes from the same kind of thinking about leadership that de-animates the left when it comes to the president.

The problem is that we have invested our leaders with too much authority, too much prestige, with an almost royal sense of power. We have lost sight of our own authority, especially in regards to war.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Dispatches: Reform education by empowering teachers

Our obsession with accountability and market-driven educational reforms has turned teachers in to robots and robbed our students of our teachers’ creativity.

That’s teh point of this week’s Dispatches.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

I’m from Jersey, you from Jersey?

I have lived in New Jersey for going on 40 years. I live here now by choice and bristle at some of the dumber jokes made at the state’s expense (and laugh when the jokes are funny). So I can sympathize with the folks who have kicked off this campaign to combat the stereotypes.

And yet, I am flummoxed that its slogan is “Jersey Doesn’t Stink.” First, some areas do, but that comes with the territory (farms and industry) and is true for most states. More importantly, it is a dopey slogan, a negative that has nothing positive to say and that plays to, rather than against, the stereotypes. The campaign would have done better with one of those silly songs that made the rounds several years ago — “I Like Jersey Best” — or a billboard with famous Jerseyans (Springsteen, Sinatra, DeVito, Nicholson, Robert Pinsky, William Carlos Williams, Rick Barry, Franco Harris, etc.).

Now, that doesn’t stink, right?

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Tunnel of the ‘lost ARC’

I want to start this post with a couple of caveats:

  1. I generally support the expansion of mass transit, with some exceptions.
  2. I rarely agree with Paul Mulshine, the conservative columnist for The Star-Ledger, though I do think he is one of the more thoughtful conservatives out there.
  3. In its most theoretical sense, the massive rail tunnel project under the Hudson River makes some sense.

Now, let’s get down to the brass tax of this post.

The  Access to the Region’s Core project, or ARC, is neither theoretical nor logical given the fiscal realities facing not only New Jersey but New York, as well. While a rail tunnel into the city that could expand rail access would seem to make sense, this project fall short of its original goals and appears headed for boondoggle status.

As Mulshine writes in today’s Ledger, the ARC project falls far short of its original goals and may just be counterproductive in the long run. The

$8.7 billion plan would give Manhattan exactly what it doesn’t need: yet another railroad station that isn’t linked to the rest of the rail network.

The current plan calls for construction of a new station, next to Penn but deep underground, that would serve only the new lines. It would be so far below the surface, says Clift, that riders would wonder whether they were traveling on a rail line or an escalator line.

That’s a lot of bucks for a lot less bang than we need.

Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club argues that “the riders of the lost ARC,” as he calls them, will never achieve the connectivity to Grand Central that was originally promised. The newer, deeper tunnel will dead-end at a water tunnel that New York City won’t be replacing anytime soon, said Tittel.

And remember, the tunnel is being built with money that we just don’t hvae, as conservative state Sen. Michael Doherty pointed out to Mulshine.

“Frankly, nobody knows where money’s coming from,” Doherty said. “The Transportation Trust Fund is depleted and now we’re going to divert money that should be going for road maintenance for this tunnel?”

This in a state with crumbling roads and failing bridges and — and this is key — inadequate rail service on existing lines. It would seem to me that we do more to fix our infrastructure — while creating needed jobs — by putting our money into fixing what we already have (This might make for good housing policy, as well) rather than just building newer and fancier toys.

That remains to be seen. The trust fund doesn’t run out of money until next year.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.