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.

Blogging Obama 1

The talking heads have a very different sense of what the president has been up to than the people in the trenches, the workers and homeowners dealing with the economic fallout. On both ABC and CBS, for instance, they painted a picture of an American public skeptical of the Obama program — when the polling shows a very different story.

The ABC/Washington Post poll issued today, for instance, showed large majorities backing the Obama stimulus package and saying it is likely to make things better (64 percent support it, 58 percent believe it will help and 62 percent believe it will help locally, while just a quarter say it will make things worse).

Another ABC/Washington Post poll found that about two thirds of Americans support the president’s plans to “75 billion dollars to provide refinancing assistance to homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure on their mortgages” — even with the alleged populist wildfire started by a rant on CNBC.

Other polls have given the president a 60 percent approval rating with most Americans saying they trust his handling of the economy.

So, the job tonight is not to convince the American people to trust him, but to explain to Americans exactly what to expect as we move forward, to not raise expectations and push for wide-ranging reforms — new regulations of the economy (banks in particular), promotion of new technologies, etc.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Lance explains anti-stimulus vote

U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance has been in the Congress less than two months, but he seems to be getting the hang of things. He talks about bipartisanship as if it were some kind of religion, but then votes in lockstep with the rest of the House Republicans against the stimulus bill, explaining his vote with GOP talking points.

We had Lance in the office last week — the full audio will be available on our site — and he said that “he recognized the need for a stimulus plan but opposed the Democratic package because it contained too much spending and increased the national debt too precipitously.”

”I am as a member of Congress deeply concerned about levels of federal debt,” he said.

The bill’s size was an issue, he said, adding that “he would have preferred a stimulus package like the alternate proposed by Republican Whip Eric Cantor, a $500 billion package equally divided between stimulus spending and tax credits.”

But many economists — the majority, in fact — believe the bill signed by President Obama was too small and that Congress will have to pass a second, larger package to have any real impact.

Ultimately, he dismissed the notion that he voted based on pressure from his party — though he repeatedly spoke during our interview about his lack of influence as a freshman member of Congress.

“I always vote my conscience and voted my conscience on that piece of legislation,” he said.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Prescription pot passes

The state Senate approved legislation yesterday that would allow patients suffering from wasting syndrom and debilitating pain to use marijuana. As I write in this week’s Dispatches, which I’ll post to our site later today, this is the compassionate thing to do. Kudos to the Senators who backed it and let’s hope the Assembly moves its version, sponsored by Reed Gusciora, through the process and to the governor’s desk sooner rather than later.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.