Hank Kalet

Maybe something good can come from all this ugliness and greed in Trenton. Maybe reform will finally end up on the agenda — like those ordered for independent authorities by Gov. Corzine or proposed by legislative Republicans (a mixed-bag of the good and the politically expededient, but a proposal nonetheless worth a discussion).

Here, according to the AP, is what the GOP is proposing:

The Republican-supported bills, among other things, propose barring public officials from holding more than one elected office, prohibiting public officials from receiving late-career salary increases that boost taxpayer-funded pensions, expanding a state anti-nepotism law, requiring unpaid suspensions of indicted public officials and mandatory jail time and full pension forfeiture for public officials convicted of corruption.

The Corzine executive order:

requires state authorities to establish bidding procedures, award most contracts to the low bidder, boost financial reporting, publicly advertise all contracts and work with state economic growth officials to coordinate spending.

A first step? I hope so.

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

The administration seems to be waging war against the press in Iraq, targeting Iraqis working for American news organizations. Read this Bob Herbert column for details.

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

Good post from Bill Bowman on Civil Disobedient on this story from Sunday’s New York Times on the most recent National Intelligence Estimate. Seems everything those of us opposed to the war in Iraq were saying back before the war was right. How about that?

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

Here is a draft (I think) of a poem I wrote this week for my niece, who came home from the hospital earlier this week:

TINY FINGERS
for Jocelyn, seven days old

by Hank Kalet

Tiny fingers

like the smallest twigs
tossed off trees
in a storm, scattered

across the yard,

fragile, like the last
warm day of fall
or news pages

dried and yellowed,

flitting in the breeze,
or a moment of quiet
in Khartoum, in Baghdad

or on the back streets

of this coughing
industrial city.
I can feel you

twitch and turn

in my arms
against the rhythms
of your new breath

under fluorescent lights,

against the hum
of air conditioning and
pinch of feeding tubes,

in your room with a view

of the city and the river,
with our voices, set
like sax solos above

the clinical din

of machines.
What could you
be thinking, dreaming,

seven days old,

nurses on strike
outside your window,
as you raise your hand,

cover your face,

try to pull
the tape off
that holds your

feeding tube

in place?
What could you
be thinking,

fragile fall day

the sun out,
your parents
waiting to take you

home.

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

Finally getting a chance to post, for a minute anyway, after spending the day painting the kitchen. Wanted to note this column from Tom Moran in the Star-Ledger. Moran has been pretty consistently banging the drum against corruption and calling out the Democrats for their hypocrisy on the issue. Here he takes on the absurd arguments surrounding the investigation into Camden Sen. Wayne Bryant, calling out the folks who have been coddling this kind of behavior and badly damaging credibility of state and local government in the process.

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