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 Jersey: The debtor state

How bad are the state’s finances? Consider this report from The Star-Ledger:

New Jersey’s state debt swelled by almost $2.2 billion last year even as Gov. Jon Corzine campaigned to rein in borrowing, state officials have confirmed.

The additional borrowing pushes the state’s debt load to $32.9 billion. Including $3.6 billion in bonds being repaid with payments from a national settlement against cigarette manufacturers — which the state Treasury does not count in its debt calculations — the state’s total debt load is $36.5 billion, nearly triple the level of a decade ago.

State bond documents show that the bulk of the new debt run up last year was attributable to the state’s $8.6 billion school construction program and transportation projects.

The problem with debt, of course, is not debt itself. Some debt is inevitable — it simply makes no sense to upgrade or build new roads using general operating funds (most people don’t do that with their homes), or to build new schools or purchase parkland. These are longterm expenditures that will be of benefit not only to us but to future generations.

The problem is that the state’s debt also includes an array of borrowing designed to do little more than balance the budget.

The upshot of all of this, of course, is that debt repayment pinches other areas of spending.

Repaying the state’s debt is scheduled to cost about $2.8 billion this year, a jump of about $115 million over last year’s debt costs. But Corzine said his debt retirement plan will cut that tab by at least $130 million.

That’s $115 million that had to go to debt repayment in a flat budget that could have gone to other programs — or to tax relief.

That makes debt our No. 1 fiscal issue, one that has to be tackled to allow the state to do the other things that need to be done.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Where rock returns?

This is interesting and probably shows my age, but WNEW has been revived as a high-def radio station broadcasting on HD Radio and on the Web.

WNEW 102.7 FM in New York, which billed itself as the place where rock lives, was the place — and I mean THE place — for rock ‘n’ roll, especially rock that ignored traditional boundaries. When I was in high school, which was at the tail end of the station’s real heyday, you could hear The Beatles and Led Zeppelin mixed with The Vapors, Jim Carroll and Elvis Costello (this was back when he wasn’t considered mainstream). The mix may not seem that revolutionary now, but consider how rare it is — outside of satellite radio — to hear Kings of Leon, The Fratellis and Art Brut, Zep, the Stones and early Aerosmith on the same playlist.

That cross-pollination was encouraged by a management that valued music and creativity.

That came to an end as the ’80s wore on — the station would continue as a shell of itself until the late 1990s — as the changes in the radio world, the return to extremely segregated playlists and an aversion to experimentation, a devotion to marketing at the expense of the music, replaced the creative impulse. The station moved through various rock formats — classic rock, “new” rock, etc. — that gutted what made the station so vital.

The new technology — the expanded HD spectrum, Web broadcasting — may allow an endrun around the marketers and bring back what made WNEW the station it was.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.