Hank Kalet

I recorded an explainer podcast for Newsworks NJ on the issue of homelessness in the state. You can listen here.

Sept. 23 is one of those rare days for me, as a music fan. Four fine new album — among many good ones — were released by some of my favorite artists, and it is the birthday of not just one, but two of my personal musical lode stars.

What follows attempts a brief summary of the day:

Happy 65th birthday to Bruce Springsteen.

It’s hard to imagine, but I’ve been listening to Bruce Sprinsteen for nearly 40 years (his career spans 41 years) and have seen him 10 times (plus once when he made a surprise appearance at the Stone Pony). The Boss has, in many ways, been as influential to my writing — as poet and journalist — and my political philosophy as William Carlos Williams, The New York Times, The Nation magazine and Howard Zinn.

Here is an interesting piece on Springsteen and history — thanks to Eric Alterman for posting it to his Facebook page, which is where I first saw it — that makes a strong case for The Boss’ cultural and historical importance.

Here is a video of Bruce — on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour — performing my favorite of his songs, “Backstreets.”

Happy birthday, John Coltrane.

The great saxophonist was the first jazz artist to capture my attention, and his magnum opus, so to speak, the brilliant A Love Supreme, remains a touchstone and foundation for my sense of sound and of spirituality.

New music:

Leonard Cohen (who turned 80 on Sunday) has released another understated poetic collection. Popular Problems may not be his best recording, but it is quite good and, as The Guardian writes, hopeful evidence that Cohen has more to say and will continue saying it well into his ninth decade.

Imelda May has released another rockabilly-jazz-punk hybrid, Tribal, one that crackles so energy (and features a ukelele version of Blondie’s “Dreaming,” of all things), thanks to one of the better bands in the business.

I love Chuck Prophet and I love his latest, Night Surfer, because it rocks and because his voice reminds me a bit of Iggy Pop on this one.

Tweedy is the side-project of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, and while the band takes his last name as it’s own, it is not designed as a vanity project. The band features Tweedy’s 18-year-old son Spencer on drums (he’s damned good) and its debut album, Sukierae, was conceived and created as a family affair and is thematically centered on the cancer diagnosis of Tweedy’s wife, Susan Miller — listen to the Sound Opinions interview or read Greg Kot’s Chicago Tribune piece for more on that.

The album, of course, is reminiscent of Wilco — as with Wilco, Jeff writes and sings all the songs — though it has a different sonic feel. Based on my first listen, it is one of the better releases of the year so far.

I’ll be reading from As an Alien in a Land of Promise during a luncheon fundraiser for the ACME Screening Room in Lambertville on Saturday.

After the luncheon, there will be a showing of Jack Ballo’s film and an exhibit of photos from Sherry Rubel.

The three of us spent the better part of a year visiting Tent City in Lakewood to document what can only be described as a community of internally displaced persons that sprouted in Ocean County. Lakewood officials fought the camp, which was closed earlier this year, and far too many have attempted to ignore the economic dysfunction that made it unfortunately necessary — and makes it likely that others will continue to sprout.

Now, nearly two years after we began the project, we are back together to present our work to the public — and, hopefully, to draw some attention to the plight of the homeless.

Send me an e-mail.

NBC News reported last night that a federal probe has found no evidence that Gov. Chris Christie knew anything in advance about the closure in 2013 of the local lanes connecting with the George Washington Bridge.

The governor responded last night on 101.5 by saying he was unsurprised. Earlier in the day, he called for an end to the Legislative investigation, which he called a partisan witch hunt. The report, he essentially says, is a vindication. Time to move on.

Perhaps, but let’s step back a bit and review what NBC actually reported.

The U.S. Justice Department investigation into Gov. Chris Christie’s role in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal has thus far uncovered no evidence indicating that he either knew in advance or directed the closure of traffic lanes on the span, federal officials tell NBC 4 New York.

The September 2013 closures — where several entrance lanes to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee were shut down, causing a traffic nightmare for commuters — has been the subject of several federal and state investigations.

Federal officials caution that the investigation that began nine months ago is ongoing and that no final determination has been made, but say that authorities haven’t uncovered anything that indicates that Christie knew in advance or ordered the closure of traffic lanes.

Two things should be immediately apparent.

1. The sources for this report are anonymous and there is no indication that they can be verified independently.

2. These unnamed federal officials are careful to couch their terms — nothing has been found “thus far” and the investigation “is ongoing and … no final determination has been made.”

I’m not questioning the report’s accuracy, only its sourcing and presentation, which is far more definitive than the reporting seems to indicate.

This is especially true given that the U.S. attorney’s office offered this curt comment to NJ.com:

“The investigation is not over,” said Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

But my post is not really about Christie or the bridge scandal. My issue here is with NBC’s use of unnamed sources, a practice that remains widespread among journalists and often results in a distortion of the news and a commandeering of the political news cycle. Implying that the governor has been cleared — which may turn out to be true — could affect the way the story is reported going forward and, in turn, affect public opinion. It may have an impact on the presidential race, on state-level investigations and other matters.

All of this would be acceptable we’re the information being provided to the public was more definitive. That is the trade-off we make. At this point, however, all we are tossing into the public space is speculation.

I haven’t been following the Scottish independence referendum all that closely until this week, so I can’t say whether a separate Scotland makes sense for the Scots — and, besides, it’s not my call; it’s theirs. But this piece from The New York Times’ Upshot blog offers an interesting take, placing the vote within the context of a rebellion against elites that has been bubbling up from below.

Neil Irwin, the author, connects the dots between the Scots, the Tea Party and a backlash within the European Union. While there are ideological differences — the Scots are largely leftist while the Tea Party is to the extreme right — there is a common thread: anger at governing institutions’ failure to safeguard the population as the world economy tanked.

It is a crisis of the elites. Scotland’s push for independence is driven by a conviction — one not ungrounded in reality — that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades. The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone. It is, in many ways, a defining feature of our time.

The rise of Catalan would-be secessionists in Spain, the rise of parties of the far right in European countries as diverse as Greece and Sweden, and the Tea Party in the United States are all rooted in a sense that, having been granted vast control over the levers of power, the political elite across the advanced world have made a mess of things.

As he says,

The details of the policy mistakes are different, as are the political movements that have arisen in protest. But together they are a reminder that no matter how entrenched our government institutions may seem, they rest on a bedrock assumption: that the leaders entrusted with power will deliver the goods.

When they don’t, they supposed to face consequences. “Power,” after all, “is not a right; it is a responsibility.”

The choice that the Scots are making on Thursday is about whether the men and women who rule Britain messed things up so badly that they would rather go it alone. And so the results will ripple through world capitals from Athens to Washington: People don’t think the way things are going is good enough, and voters are getting angry enough to want to do something about it.

Populist energy can swing both ways — see Occupy and the Tea Party — so the shape that a populist revolt might have in the United States is in dispute. As things stand, there remains more energy on the right than on the left, meaning that the most vulnerable populations might be endangered if the anger reaches a tipping point. That doesn’t mean the left should abandon populism in favor of a broken meritocracy (see Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites), but rather that the left needs to develop a more effective populist infrastructure that speak more effectively to those who are angry over being left behind by American capitalism.