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.

Changing the deficit debate

Finally, it appears that someone in Washington is willing to take on that city’s biggest sacred cow — the military.

Dan Froomkin reported yesterday on Huffington Post that U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is convening “his own bipartisan commission” that “will specifically look at ways to reduce the bloated military budget.”

Defense cuts seems to be politically off-limits these days, but the group convened by the outspoken liberal congressman from Massachusetts shares a belief that America is “overextended and overcommitted” and that there should be a “substantial reduction in the reach of American military commitments,” Frank told HuffPost.

His likely targets: unnecessary weapons systems and overseas military bases — and a savings of $100 billion a year.

Defense spending has outpaced the need for it, he says, with weapons and bases creating their own skewed justifications.

“During the Cold War, 26 percent of military spending in the world was American; now it’s 41 percent. So we have fewer enemies and we’re spending more money.”

Lets have no illusions about what Frank’s commission is likely to produce. The military remains Washington’s biggest sacred cow for a lot of reasons — corporate profits, the need for politicians to look tough — so any real cuts proposed by Frank are likely to go nowhere, at least in the short term.

In the long run, though, Frank’s commission has the potential to alter the conversation, which could lead to defense cuts down the road. And that’s key. We spend way too much on the military, way too much to project power around the globe. The money spent on the military is money that could be, should be spent on something more productive for society, on expanding access to health care and rebuilding our bridges and modernizing our power grid and fixing our schools and hiring teachers.

So bravo Barney. Keep up the good work.

The key to defense budget cutting, Frank said, is to attack the notion that the U.S. military needs to be everywhere in the world militarily. “If you let them insist that there is a need for worldwide military engagement, we will be at a disadvantage when we fight the specific fights” to cut programs, he said.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Skewing the debate with disingenuous rhetoric

I teach a developmental level English class at Middlesex County College twice a week and I’ve spent the last couple of classes talking about logical fallacies.

The issue is that the students tend to fall into these errant patterns as they make their arguments in their writing — writing around the debate or mistakenly allowing a single person to stand in for a group.

One of the errors we’ve talked about is called the straw-man fallacy — or one in which a proposition is criticized by distorting the original proposition so that it seems outrageous, weak or dangerous and then knocking down the distortion.

An example — which I included on a quiz today — is this (phrased a bit differently):

Actual argument: We should legalize marijuana for medical purposes.

Distorted argument: Allowing unrestricted access to drugs will lead to crime and drug dependency. Therefore, legalizing medical marijuana is wrong.

    The problem here is simple. The argument being disputed is not the argument being offere; it is proposing a far more extensive legalization than the original proposition offers. However, the critic uses the more extreme distortion to win debate points.

    I have The Dylan Ratigan Show on in the background as I’m working this afternoon, and he had as guests Jonathan Capehart of The Washingon Post and Mark Tapscott of The Washington Examiner. Capehart echoed something that both former President Bill Clinton and Post columnist E.J. Dionne have said — that the ratcheting up of harsh rhetoric and the use of violent metaphors will create a climate for actual violence.

    Tapscott responded with the classic straw-man, accusing Capehart — and Dionne and Clinton and liberals in general — of calling for government to step in to ban speech, asking who would be making the decision on what speech should be permitted.

    While I think we have to be careful when we confuse speech with action — we fight the toxic rhetoric of lock-and-load Sarah Palin and the Tea Party crowd with better, more effective speech — it is pretty clear when you listen to Capehart or Clinton or read Dionne that they are not talking about restrictions. They are talking about pushing back against the ugliness and finding ways to tone down the rhetoric, to cool it so that a rational, if not polite political debate can move forward.

    Tapscott, however, would have none of that. He’s erected his straw man and felt perfectly comfortable (with what I would characterize as a smug half smile on his face — am I engaging in an ad hominem attack?) in distorting what Capehart had to say so that he could look like the defender of the First Amendment. (The actual video is not yet available; I’ll post as soon as it is.) And Ratigan called it a good back and forth, even though it was anything but.

    How can I teach students — and new journalists, for that matter — that they should avoid these logical fallacies if the people running the nation’s editorial pages (Tapscott is the Examiner’s editorial page editor) view them as perfectly legitimate debate tools?

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    The future is now at first

    Ike Davis is coming to Citi Field. The young slugger who the Mets view as the first-baseman of the future is going to get a chance to make his future now — something the Mets should have done on opening day.

    The Mets had nothing to lose with this move. Davis either will prove to be ready (either as the bopper they are hoping for or as a future bopper who can handle himself as he grows into a middle-of-the-order guy), or he isn’t and gets sent back down for more seasoning.

    The alternative, at the moment, is Fernando Tatis, which is not much of an alternative at all.

    Let’s hope Ike makes a splash and turns into the lefty presence the team needs.

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    Funding the lobbying infrastructure

    Local governments say that it’s money well spent, but the $2 million paid by municipal and other local public bodies to lobbyists is little more than a transfer of tax dollars into the pockets of glorified ad-men.

    The money, says the Star-Ledger, “is hidden, with no requirements that governments tell the public what their lobbyists are up to.”

    Municipal officials argue that the “shrinking pot of state revenues” makes it necessary to have someone tasked with digging up and fighting for the cash, but as state comptroller Michael Boxer points out, it pushes up the cost of government at a time when we are slashing necessary services.

    “It really is a race to the bottom, ultimately, because as some government entities hire a lobbyist to advocate for them, other government entities feel compelled to do so to level the playing field,” said state comptroller Matthew Boxer. “At the end of the day, the same amount of taxpayer dollars are going to be awarded — but we’ve imposed a transaction cost.”

    South Brunswick, for instance, spent $36,000 last year on a lobbyist to focus on its township bus program and to fight for money to widen Route 1. That’s not a lot of cash. But, given that the township is closed one Friday a month and that it has laid off employees, I have to wonder if paying a lobbyist is really the best use of the money.

    Gov. Chris Christie appears to agree. His spokesman, Michael Drewniak, told the Star-Ledger that “local governments don’t need lobbyists.”

    “It’s a waste of money. Save it. Use it for something else,” Drewniak said.

    The chances of that happening are slim, however, unless the governor and the state Legislature step in and address the issue. An outright ban might not pass constitutional muster — lobbyists, after all, include everyone from high-priced private firms to the State League of Municipalities and the New Jersey Sierra Club and they have a right to petition the government. At the same time, the state constitution grants the Legislature the right to regulate local operations, including placing limits on how its money is spent, which leaves open the possibility that the state could place restrictions on spending that effectively limit or eliminate the spending of public money on lobbying activities.

    Or it could impose strict disclosure rules, similar to those in place for private entities.

    Boxer and ELEC executive director Jeff Brindle say, at the very least, lobbyists and local governments should be forced disclose their interactions and the cost. Boxer said towns should explain why they hired lobbyists and what they got in return.

    “There’s actually less oversight and transparency than there is when private dollars are at issue,” Boxer said.

    What is clear — to me, at least — is that we can not afford to be spending money on the Trenton version of K Street when we do not have enough money available to maintain our local streets.

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.