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.

What was that he said about change?

This is getting old. At every turn, it seems, the Obama administration has chosen to keep in place some noxious policy from his predecessor. The latest — following his decision earlier this week not to release photos of detainee abuse — is his decision to keep in place a version of President Bush’s military commissions.

Administration officials said they were making changes in the system to grant detainees expanded legal rights, but critics said the move was a sharp departure from the direction President Obama had suggested during the campaign, when he characterized the commissions as an unnecessary compromise of American values.

In a statement, Mr. Obama noted that the country had a long tradition of using military commissions, and said the changes would make the tribunals, to be used along with federal courts, a fairer avenue for prosecution. “This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values,” Mr. Obama said.

The commissions are run by the Pentagon under a 2006 law passed specifically for terrorism suspects, in part to make it easier to win convictions than in federal courts. The Obama administration suspended the military commission system in its first week in office.

The commissions, however, do not uphold our values so much as create a system that allows us to pretend we remain committed to a system of justice that puts the burden on the prosecution to prove its case while, all the while, ignoring that basic tenet.

Obama should have realized that he was driving down the wrong street on this one when he was praised by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky,

who has issued daily criticisms of the president’s plan to close Guantánamo, called the move to revive the tribunals “an encouraging development.”

Then there is this even more troubling reaction from David B. Rivkin Jr., a former Reagan official, who

said the decision suggested that the Obama administration was coming to accept the Bush administration’s thesis that terror suspects should be viewed as enemy fighters, not as criminal defendants with all the rights accorded by American courts.

“I give them great credit for coming to their senses after looking at the dossiers” of the detainees, Mr. Rivkin said.

Accepting the Bush thesis? Is this the change for which Americans voted?

The Friday Five: Songs of Springsteen

I am starting today what I hope will be a regular feature of this blog. The Friday Five will be a listing of five related items, possibly five news items or something else that may be on my mind. This week I offer my five favorite covers of Bruce Springsteen songs:

Dave Edmunds, “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)”
Johnny Cash, “Highway Patrolman”
Robert Gordon, “Fire”
Rage Against the Machine, “The Ghost of Tom Joad”
Steve Earle, “State Trooper”

(I’d recommend Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, as well, which is a great collection of artists doing songs from the album.)

Check back Saturday for the Saturday shuffle.

Chrysler’s raw deal

We are about to feel the real effects of the debate over the future of the American auto industry. Chrysler announced yesterday that it is closing about a quarter of its dealerships including 30 in New Jersey (which includes the Belle Mead Garage on Route 206 in Montgomery and Coleman Chrysler-Jeep on Route 130 in East Windsor). General Motors is expected to begin closing dealerships, as well.

Chrysler said it will eliminate 789 dealers — or one-fourth of its 3,200 franchises nationwide — early next month so it can focus more on high-volume stores. The cuts are likely to be devastating in communities where car dealers are the biggest small business in town, with thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue on the line.

“Businesses will close, and in many cases, given the state of the real estate market, you will have boarded-up commercial structures,” said Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers. “New Jersey’s members of Congress did not vote for the auto bailout because they have a soft spot for Detroit. It’s because they have a soft spot for the 36,000 people who are employed at New Jersey dealerships.”

Dealers were told yesterday morning whether they would remain in the Chrysler fold or be terminated June 9. Chrysler vice chairman Jim Press called the cuts “difficult” and said the terminated dealers have no right of appeal. Car dealers are normally protected by state franchise laws, although such protections are usually superseded by federal bankruptcy law.

“This is a difficult day for us and not a day anybody can be prepared for,” Press told reporters during a conference call. “There are no winners and losers today.”

I haven’t seen any job-loss estimates tied to the 30 dealership, but you have to assume that several thousand will be looking for work — salesmen, business-office personnel, mechanics, etc.

And there will be ancillary impacts: vacant buildings, lost revenue for neighboring businesses (restaurants, etc.), lost tax revenue for communities.

Expanding the Immigration debate

I’ve received about a half dozen comments on this week’s Dispatches column, “Immigration misperceptions stymie reform,” mostly from people who think I am a) crazy or b) a pie-eyed, or who make less-than-veiled attacks on the ethnicity of the undocumented.

I share some of it here, just to give you a taste:

From “BajaRat”: “Illegal aliens are criminals and parasites, one and all. Their very presence here and practically everything they do on U. S. soil is illegal. They need to be ferreted out, rounded up like cattle, punished for their numerous crimes, then booted back to whence they snuck in from with such extreme prejudice that they will never, ever think of violating our sovereignty again. Enough is enough.”

Hmmm. Check the language — parasites, cattle, criminals who’ve committed numerous crimes, sneaky. Pretty harsh.

From “From Gay Marriage to Illegal Immigration”: “Hank Kalet, there you go again. Lets start from the basic premise that illegal immigrants are not legal immigrants. It is not fair to those legal immigrants that may have waited their turn to enter this country legally.

Kalet is a liberal in every sense of the word.

We seem to have excused Turbo Tax Cheat Tim Geithner from paying his taxes even after he signed a form notifying him that he needed to pay his taxes that the IMF gave him a separate check specifically for this tax. So what do we do – we put this guy in charge of among other things the IRS. Now that is pretty blatant.

So now Hank Kalet wants us to lump in illegal immigrants with the legal ones. Hey, no need to follow the law. furthermore, lets be sensitive and give these folks a drivers license. I would say they might as well drive illegally as well. In-state tuition should be given as well. Lets not forget the free health care at the emergency room.

Please don’t give us this c r a p about the TV guys and Republicans. Either it is the law or it isn’t. That is the part that infuriates us.

Now if you want to call Hank directly at the Packet to discuss this be sure to press #1 for English, or is that #2?”

Yes, I am a liberal. And yes, I do believe gays and lesbians should be able to marry. What this has to do with the plight of the undocumented is beyond me, as is the odd Tim Geithner tangent. Best I can tell is this may be an Obama reference — you know, “the devil.”

This “it’s the law trope,” by the way, is a logical non-sequiter, failing to address the underlying ethics of the immigration debate. Yes, the undocumented have broken the law — as have all of those people who drive above the speed limit, lie on their tax forms, do home remodeling without a permit, smoke the occasional joint or authorize torture in interrogations. All of these things are illegal; their morality, however, has nothing to do with their legality.

The issue is not necessarily the law, but the ethical underpinning of the law. Laws change — slavery was legal and endorsed by the U.S. Constitution and interracial marriage was against the law until the 1960s. The question, in the end, is what purpose a law serves and I see no public purpose to taking a hardline approach with some poor manual laborer, but letting a presidential administration off the hook for violating national anti-torture statutes (yes, this is my own non-sequiter, but I think it’s a relevant one).

Taxes, taxes, taxes

I just want to be clear about this. The two top Republican candidates, Chris Christie and Steve Lonegan, want to cut state income taxes at a moment in state history when we don’t have enough revenue to cover what we now spend.

Lonegan’s plan — a flat tax — would shift the tax burden downward, cutting taxes for most New Jerseyans making more than $70,000. As for the folks at the bottom of the income ladder, they would see an increase in their state income taxes. Seems a tad unfair, if you ask me.

Christie, on the other hand, wants to cut taxes in some unspecified manner that will depend on revenue projections while eliminating state jobs (which ones, he won’t say). This seems to be pure pandering.

Neither plan addresses the real issues that face the state — too many overlapping layers of government, excessive property tax bills, the high cost of living and its impact on lower- and middle-income folks.