Dispatches is about a Beatles-inspired performance I watched over the weekend and the failure of American culture to respect its cultural past.
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.
Runner’s diary, Thursday
Nice morning for a run. I managed four miles, with four more to go for the week.
iPod was filled with podcasts: Glenn Greenwald’s interview with Charles King on the crisis in the Caucasus and a set of live tracks from the Shout Out Louds at the South By Southwest music festival.
Rock hall in a New York state of mind
A New York branch of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Looks that way.
The Times piece doesn’t mention it, but the final choice was between NY and Cleveland, where the hall landed. A New York satellite would be a nice addition — I’d suggest wings devoted to Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the early folk revival, New York’s important punk/new wave scene of the ’70s (Television, New York Dolls, Ramones, Richard Hell, Patti Smith, etc.), early Manhattan hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash, breakdancing, etc.)and its outborough offshoots, doo-wop, the Brill Building, Ed Sullivan, Shea Stadium and the Garden, as well as New Jersey wing (lots of Bruce, a lock of Bon Jovi’s hair, some Southside stuff, Lauren Hill and Queen Latifah, etc.).
I’ll have to make a trip.
A real reason to be disappointedwith John Edwards
I was a supporter of John Edwards during the primaries (my favorite candidate, Dennis Kucinich, didn’t stand a chance), so I was disappointed when the revelations of his affair with a campaign staffer came out, effectively ending his political career and any shot he had of joining an Obama administration. (Though it would behoove the national press to consider some other high-profile philanderers — Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Ted Kennedy — and remember that they managed to get past their indiscretions and survive. Clinton, obviously, became president and Kennedy remains, even with his recent brain tumor surgery, the Senate’s liberal lion, while Hart has become a Democratic elder statesman and foreign-policy wonk.)
But I was more disappointed — truly disappointed — when I read this, because it leaves Edwards looking like a crass opportunist and not the populist crusader he cast himself to be. So sad.
Paying their way
It has always struck me as a bit unfair that my local taxes had to pay for police services when several dozen rural communities were able to take advantage of the State Police without chipping in to offset the cost.
Think about it. In South Brunswick, we pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $9 million to run our Police Department — about 18 percent of the total budget. If that service were passed along to the state and police spending was eliminated from the South Brunswick budget, the municipal tax rate would be slashed by as much as 20 cents — or about $380 for the owner of a house assessed at the township average of about $190,000.
The key to understanding this issue comes down to this: South Brunswick taxpayers and Monroe taxpayers and Jamesburg taxpayers and Cranbury taxpayers and the 474 other towns in the state that have their own police departments are paying for a service that rural taxpayers are getting for free.
Yes, I know that they pay state taxes, but so do I. And I know that most of us are subsidizing the big urban towns, but the big cities — thanks to a host of development policies pushed by the state and the feds — have eroding tax bases that make it nearly impossible to provide services without soaking their taxpayers.
At one time, the provision of police to small rural towns made sense. Farming towns were considered less well off, but over the years, small farming towns have seen the value of their land skyrocket. At the same time, they’ve been given a pass on paying for police services.
Paul Mulshine, in last Thursday’s Star-Ledger, comes to the small towns’ defense, calling the state’s decision to bill the towns a “war on small towns.” He quotes Republican Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow, who says that “the entire cost of rural State Police patrols, $12.5 million, could be funded with just 8 percent of the money sent by Corzine to six distressed cities. And those cities also get billions in property tax relief for their schools.”
“There is all kind of urban aid in the state,” said Karrow. “The State Police is the one small example of something we could call rural aid.”
Distressed is the key word, for me. The state has a responsibility to its citizens, especially those in distressed areas. The state’s cities certainly qualify and need help. Some smaller towns and working-class boroughs — like Manville and Jamesburg, for instance — deserve help, too.
But if towns that have the cash should pay their way.
That’s the argument that The Asbury Park Press makes today, in an editorial that criticizes a plan by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, to assess a “$40-per-summons surcharge on all motor vehicle violations to be used to underwrite State Police patrols in 89 towns that previously had received the service for free.”
The Press correctly calls the Drew plan “a wrong-headed response to the problem” of “small towns, mostly rural, being allowed to avail themselves of a service without having to pay the full cost.” Their suggestion:
(T)he towns should be given a reasonable period of time — two to three years — to either wean themselves off State Police coverage or pay 100 percent of its cost.
Options for the towns would include creating their own police force, contracting with an adjacent police department for coverage or working with other small towns to create a regional police department.
I would add that towns that can show a real financial hardship — and by that I do not mean just an increase in property taxes, but tax bills that are disproportionate to the income levels of residents — should have access to aid.
To allow the status quo to continue as it is just isn’t fair to the majority of the state’s taxpayers.
