Hank Kalet

Our friends at Blanton and Ashton’s offer one of the better summaries of the desultary New Jersey Senate race that I’ve seen.

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

There is something phony and elitist about the argument David Ignatius makes in this column (building on his reading of “The Way to Win” by Mark Halperin of ABC News and John F. Harris of The Washingotn Post. They posit a vision of America that pits centrist and civil pragmatists against the flamethrowers at the edge, placing the old-guard media like the major papers and the network news programs on the side of civility and reason.

Centrists like Bill Clinton, the argument goes, are only interested in solutions and not in ideology. This is the correct stance, Ignatius implies. The flamethrowers, which include the blogosphere, cable news and team Bush, are ideaologues and divisive and dangerous to our democracy.

The flaw in the argument is that ideology does matter. Political philosophy guides how we react to events and how we hope to make the world better. I come from a left-liberal perspective and believe that government can work to make things better, am distrustful of corporate power and large concentrations of power more generally. I would support public control of electric utilities, for instance, and a functioning social safety net. My solutions to the nation’s — and the world’s — problems come from that basic mindset.

A conservative would approach things with a far different attitude. He or she likely believes that the public schools can be fixed only by dismantling them and opening them to market forces. Same goes for electric rates or gas prices.

Democracy demands a dialogue between these different philosophies, with the folks we elect finding a way to reach some kind of consensus without sacrificing their core beliefs or the core beliefs of their constituents.

The problem with the pragmatists described by Ignatius is that they do not appear to have core beliefs and so are willing to sacrifice it all. That was Bill Clinton’s problem — remember triangulation? — and it is why, though Democrats and liberals are unwilling to admit this, his presidency was a failure.

And it is why national Democrats continue to have trouble winning voters back to their cause.

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

Brooke Allen, in The Los Angeles Times, reminds us that the founders of the republic were skeptical of the entanglement of government and religion with a quick overview of some of James Madison’s thoughts on the topic.

The people who really did build this nation most definitely did not define “religious freedom” as the right of churches or other religious groups to benefit from taxpayer dollars.

Madison, in particular, was an unambiguous skeptic who believe that there was a definitive wall between church and state, Allen writes. Madison disapproved of

churches and religious societies being given a “legal agency” (including taxpayer funds) to carry into effect “a public and civil duty.” The public weal is the responsibility of the government itself, funded through taxation. Any charitable work churches might undertake is “pious charity,” and as such a voluntary act on the part of church members.

He wasn’t opposed to church work, but against the entanglement. The same goes for today’s so-called “separationists”:

Separationists are not attacking religion. They are merely reminding us that religion and church membership, under our Constitution, are defined as voluntary — the general population cannot be compelled to underwrite any particular church. That is what freedom of religion means.

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

County school districts appear to be all the rage. The panel studying shared services is planning to discuss legislation proposed by its chairman, state Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), that would create 21 county school districts that would have administrative control and transform local districts into advisory bodies.

The plan, according to supporters, would save significant money and seems to fit in with the state-wide push — which I support — for consolidation of government.

“Seems” is the operative word here. The need to consolidate and streamline is obvious. There are too many school districts in the state and way too many that include just one or two schools. That includes both Cranbury and Jamesburg, districts that are part of our coverage area (it also includes other small districts covered by our other papers). It is obvious that these districts cannot provide the same kind of programs that larger districts provide without spending a lot of money (Cranbury can do this because its taxpayers are relatively well-off; Jamesburg, with little property wealth and a lower income level, cannot). Consolidation, therefore, could help.

But merging all 25 school districts in Middlesex County into one larger district, even if you leave current district lines in place, poses too many challenges. Middlesex County, for instance, is the third largest district by population and is nearly three times the size of Mercer. It is a county with several distinct regions that have little in common and a county dominated politically by two incredibly large towns that account for more than one out of every four county residents.

Rather than creating a more efficient and cost-effective educational program, I can see it creating a new kind of bureaucratic morass that leaves the students in the southern part of the county behind.

A better approach might be for the state to determine what the ideal size of a school district might be — 10,000 students, for instance, or districts that cover 40,000 residents. Those are arbitrary numbers, I admit, but I choose them for a reason. I think the South Brunswick school district is a workable size, large enough to provide a good mix of programming without too much administrative overlap, but not too big that the concerns of parents or students get lost. It is not perfect, but creating a bureaucracy that is double, triple or, as with the county proposal, 16 times the size seems crazy.

I could still see some administrative functions being passed along to the county of some larger entity — such as negotiation of teacher contracts, which might also have the benefit of leveling the playing field for districts like Jamesburg or the urban schools that cannot compete with the richer schools on the salaries or benefits they can offer.

But reducing 611 school districts down to 21, as the Smith bills would do, seems absurd. Cutting the total in half or by two thirds, however, might retain the local character of the districts and save money at the same time, giving us the best of both.

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

OK. Now their backs are to the wall. I didn’t blog tonight because I’ve been working on a column for the Progressive Populist on energy deregulation. But I think we are all better off. Not a good game for the Mets, Glavine failing, then the bullpen giving a couple more up. And the bats stayed quiet. Was it yesterday’s rain out? Or something else? All I know is that they need to play like their next game is their last — because if very well could be.

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