This is how democracy is supposed to work, right? Post the bill, debate it and vote on it so everyone in the state of New Jersey can see where each of our 40 state Senators stand on the marriage equality issue. There is a good chance, unfortunately, that it will fail, but it will “out” those who refuse to see this as an issue of civil rights.
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.
Don’t buy war bonds
Sen. Ben Nelson, the conservative Democrat from Nebraska, is pushing the idea of funding the war in Afghanistan by selling government bonds — borrowing an idea that worked well during World War II.
But as this piece points out, the economy has changed, making the bond sale problematic.
More importantly, the Afghan and Iraq wars are not very popular; any funding mechanism based on a voluntary contribution is going to fail.
If we believe these wars are necessary — they aren’t, but if we want to fool ourselves into believing they are — we should be honest and pay for them out of our budget the way we pay for everything else.
Illustrating history
I found this piece on the late, great David Levine interesting, if only because the illustrators/cartoonists mentioned — his peers and followers — are the great left-liberal illustrators of our day, drawing for The Village Voice, The Nation, etc.
Levine was a great illustrator with a keen eye and his impact on the somewhat staid New York Review of Books cannot be underestimated. He will be missed.
Runner’s diary, Tuesday
As I wrote last week, I am not a big believer in new year’s resolutions. If you want to make a change or set a goal, there is no reason you cannot do it on May 2 or Sept. 14. The fact that so many of us opt to focus on Jan. 1 — and then abandon the goals almost as fast as they are set — seems a bit dopey.
In any case, here we are in a new year and I’m back at the running game. My goal is to run a half marathon at Rutgers in May, which means I must get my fat and sorry tuchus in gear. So far, I’ve hit the treadmill twice, running three yesterday and two today. My goal for the week is 10 miles, with two miles added every week for the next month or so. We’ll see.
Class begins again on Jan. 25 — I’m teaching at Middlesex County College twice a week — which tosses my running schedule into the air, but I have to make that commitment to get back to the kind of aggressive training I had been doing until the last year or so.
Time to get serious.
Optimism at the Garden: The Knicks turn a corner
A 43-point win for the Knicks is unfathomable. I caught a few minutes of the game, while cleaning up and cooking, and it is clear that a) the Pacers are an awful team and b) the Knicks have turned some sort of corner. After 1-9 and 3-14 starts, the team has gone 11-6 and has positioned itself to be in the playoff hunt (it is ninth in the conference at the moment).
Part of it appears to be a willingness to play defense, and the sudden coming together of a new core — Wilson Chandler, Dano Gallinari and David Lee, along with veterans Chris Duhan and Al Harrington. Today, for instance, each member of the new core dropped 20-plus, Duhon had 18 and seven assists and Harrington, who played just 17 minutes, popped for 15.
If they can keep this up, can drive into the playoffs and make a showing there — stretching the first round to the limit — the team might be able to lure one or two of the prime free agents out there. They have the cash and if they can show that Gallo and Chandler are for real and they can wrap up Lee at a reasonable price, anything is possible. This team remains far from real contention, lacking a real center or a point guard who can take them deep into the playoffs. Duhon is a solid playmaker, but would be better suited to coming off the bench or playing BJ Armstrong’s old role with the Bulls.
For the first time since the end of the Patrick Ewing era, Knick fans have a right to be modestly optimistic.
