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.

Militarized zone

Josh Marshall describes the basic problem with viewing the presidency only through the commander-in-chief lens, call its use as a substitute for president “novel and in many ways pernicious”:

(T)he growing use of the term in this sense is an effective barometer of the progressive militarization of our concept of the presidency and our government itself.

We see it here in its semantic form but we can observe its concrete effect in the Bush administration’s claims of almost absolute presidential power well outside of war-fighting — almost as if the president is a kind of warlord simultaneously directing the military and the civilian governments with similar fiat powers.

Marshall then reminds us just how wrongheaded this is, and how it contradicts the founders’ intent.

(T)he point of the constitution’s explicitly giving the president the title of commander-in-chief was not to make him into a quasi-military figure. It was precisely the opposite — to create no doubt that the armed forces answered not to a chief of staff or senior general or even a Secretary of Defense (originally, Secretaries of War and Navy) but to a civilian elected officeholder who operates with the constrained and limited power of that world rather than the unbound authority of military command.

That’s something the next president needs to remember.

Dispatches: Another house of cards

This week’s Dispatches, on the mortgage industry bailout, is up.

Buying the farm

The state’s money troubles could have a severe impact on one of its most popular programs, according to a story today in The Star-Ledger.

The Garden State Preservation Trust, which finances the preservation of New Jersey’s open space and historic sites, yesterday detailed its recommendations for doling out $91 million in farmland preservation money for projects all over the state.

The allocations leave $120 million in the fund — $109 million for open space preservation and parkland development and $11 million for historic site preservation. When that money is given out by the end of this year, the trust will be out of money.

The state is looking to put a funding question on the 2009 ballot, but that will come too late to provide money for next year.

Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Gov. Jon Corzine, said the governor has stressed the need to protect open space throughout New Jersey. Corzine said on June 30 he expects to wait until fall before launching an effort to find more funding for the trust and indicated he wants to look at open space funding as part of the larger issue of funding public works and transportation projects and reducing state debt.

Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), chairman of the upper house’s Environment Committee, said a poll taken by environmental activists in May and June showed more than 60 percent of potential voters support funding open space, either through an $800 million bond issue, a 40 cents per 1,000 gallons of water user fee to raise $150 million annually, or by dedicating sales tax revenue. Smith said it would take a special session of the Legislature to get either proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot.

“The sad part is that if we wait until 2009 for a ballot question the program will have come to a halt,” Smith said. “That would be a shame because now is the time to be buying open space. The state could really get land at a bargain right now.”

And, as anyone who lives in Central Jersey knows, open space and farmland preservation are among the few avenues we have to control sprawl and limit growth.

On a side note, the governor continues to link the fund to transportation projects and debt, meaning he is likely to put another version of the Turnpike plan on the table. That would be a mistake that could imperil both open space and infrastructure programs.

Let’s just be honest with everyone and raise the money openly. One way or another, we’re going to have to pay.

No solace in waiting for Bond

The movie is still several months away, but every bit of news about it just piques my interest — as did the trailer for it (here).
http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/48092dcdadf7b025/4890cfb9d2cbed52/4853134b3f3fc639/1bb1e512
But the news that Jack White and Alicia Keys are teaming up for the theme to “Quantum of Solace,” well, that’s too cool.

Foreclosing on reform

The federal housing bailout bill passed by Congress, which has a promise of a signature from the president, is fine as far as it goes.

The problem, as the progressive economist Dean Baker notes, is that it doesn’t go very far at all.

The bill allows lenders to bring failing mortgages to the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which will guarantee a new mortgage at 85 percent of the current appraised value of the home. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that lenders will bring 400,000 mortgages to the FHA over the next three years. CBO expects that 140,000 of these mortgages will go into foreclosure a second time, leaving a net of 260,000 homeowners who will hang onto their homes as a result of this program.

By contrast, there are likely to be 2.5 million to 3 million foreclosures in both 2008 and 2009. This means that the housing bill will likely help less than five percent of the families facing foreclosure over the next two years, leaving 95 percent of this group out of luck.

That’s 19 of 20 homeowners that will be left out in the cold, while

securing the multimillion-dollar salaries of the top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and protecting their shareholders from facing the full consequences of their bad stock picks, the bill also provided funds for guaranteeing new mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure.

Baker touts an alternative:

the Saving Family Homes Act, which would allow many of these homeowners to stay in their homes.

The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Raœl Grijalva, works like this:

The bill temporarily alters the rules on foreclosures. It allows homeowners facing foreclosure the option to stay in their home as renters paying the fair market rent. They would be allowed to remain in their home for up to 20 years. The bill would only apply to homes that were purchased for less than the median price in the area. This ensures that it only benefits those most in need of help, rather than millionaires who made bad bets in the housing market.

But most of those in Congress lack the creativity — or, more important, the political courage — to buck the conventional wisdom, which generally sides with the money.