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.

Breaking the chains

The Lawrence Township Council was supposed to introduce an ordinance tonight that would create a citizens committee that would explore publicly funded local elections in the Mercer County town. The committee would study the issue and make recommendations to the council, who would then decide whether to put a taxpayer-funded plan on the ballot.

It is a committee worth keeping an eye on, given the place that money plays in our electoral process.

As I wrote in an earlier column, campaign cash disparities in towns like Monroe and South Brunswick “amplif(ies) the major parties’ strength in both towns and mak(es) it easier for the major parties to attract donors and more difficult for the GOP — a double-whammy that perpetuates one-party politics.”

And the reliance on private donors distorts the lines of accountability, with money creating access and creating the impression — at the very least — that local politicians are on the take, leaving their decisions in question and diminishing our confidence in government.

Public financing — when combined with other reforms — can help break the link. Let’s see what Lawrence comes up with.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Remove the cloak

I saw this on Glen Greenwald’s blog on Salon and had to link to it because it pretty much sums up my own feelings on anonymous sources. It is from a Frontline interview with Dana Priest of The Washington Post, excerpted in E&P.

Q. In Washington, people have lots of off-the-record or confidential conversations all the time on all kinds of things, not just secret prisons.

Right. I think the press is guilty of allowing sources to ask for anonymity in far too many places.

Q. To getting spun, you mean, by the sources?Even if the information is not spun, but they just don’t want their names attached to it. You have spokesmen who are paid by U.S. taxpayers to be the spokesmen for their agencies, and they won’t put their name on simple statements.

That’s in part because we’re not calling them on it enough, and I think that we should.Papers and networks are not good at working together, but I would absolutely support an effort by us collectively to say, if you’re a spokesman, you have to have your name on the record. We need to crack down on the use of anonymous sources when it’s not absolutely necessary.And now you’re going to ask me when is it actually necessary. It is all a judgment call, but it has gotten overused, absolutely.

Q. Out of control?

It’s gotten out of control. USA Today stopped using them, and they were successful. They got people to be on the record with things that they initially said they wanted to be on background and not quoted. So I think we should do a better job trying to get people to be on the record.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Nothing more than a baby step

Alfred Doblin in The Record reminds us that the civil union legislation that was adopted by the state and went into effect at midnight remains, at best, a work in progress. Plenty of gay couples will be able to “unionize” (and I don’t mean join the Teamsters), but they will remain outside the mainstream because they cannot be married like the rest of us.

Discriminatory legislation codifies discrimination. Civil unions that give all the rights of marriage without using the word “marriage” do not give all the rights of marriage. It’s that simple.

On a side note, Doblin makes mincemeat of one of the great canards in this debate — that civil unions and gay marriages will increase health care costs.

(Bogota Mayor Steve) Lonegan says if a municipal employee were to become civil unionized, that could increase his local budget because of the partner’s benefits. If a municipal employee gets married it has the same effect. What’s the alternative? Hiring only celibate, single people? That sounds like the Roman Catholic Church. And they’ve had a few problems with that employment policy of late.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Fire district preview: A snafu

I received an e-mail this morning questioning why we didn’t write a preview of the fire district elections in Monroe. The answer? We were unable to track down the budgets and commissioners until after our deadline on Thursday. (We intended to get something up on the Web late Friday, but that fell through the cracks.)

I offer this not as an excuse. The information is public so we had a responsibility to get it.

I offer this as another example of the problems with New Jersey’s governmental structure. There is something inherently wrong with having a government entity — in this case, one that levies taxes — that is as inaccessible as most fire commissions. Our reporters attend occasional meetings, but getting information at other times is nearly impossible — this goes not only for Monroe, but for South Brunswick, Jamesburg, Plainsboro, West Windsor, nearly every fire district that I’ve had the misfortune to have to cover in my 17 years as a reporter and editor.

Monroe is supposed to be reviewing whether to consolidate its districts, maintain the status quo or abolish them altogether. I vote for abolition. At the very least, the independent fire commissions should be required to file all budget information with their municipal clerk’s office, which would make it more accessible for voters to peruse — and reporters to track down.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.