Hank Kalet

I went to a federal website looking for some information a little while ago. The above screen shot shows you how well that went.

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Back to the blog, after a nearly two-week break caused by some writing assignments — more on that when appropriate — and an excessive amount of grading.

Here are two recent pieces from NJ Spotlight, published in recent weeks, including one on Friday’s marriage-equality decision:

Likely Christie Appeal Casts Pall on Superior Court Ruling on Gay Marriage

Hank Kalet |September 30, 2013 | Social

Plaintiff’s legal team doubts governor has grounds for stay, will continue battle in State Supreme Court if necessary

Violent Crimes Climb as Police Layoffs Take Their Toll on NJ’s Troubled Cities

Hank Kalet |September 18, 2013 | More Issues, Social

Christie cites Camden’s move to county-wide force as financial model, cops call it union busting

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My latest column from The Progressive Populist is my take on the slow demise of Patch — my former employer — and the larger question of news deserts.

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I posted this in response to a friend’s Facebook post the other day.

The corporate capitalist state is designed to create big profits for a small group, create both human (homelessness, mass joblessness) and environmental waste and force a large middle to pay the cost. The middle, rightly, gets pissed; the bottom gets further ground into invisibility and the tiny minority sit in their counting houses counting coins and laughing. 

I think it fairly sums up my thinking about the issue of homelessness (and probably explains why I ended up in a counterproductive and unnecessary flame war on Twitter earlier today after I criticized a TV report on homelessness on Channel 9’s “Chasing New Jersey”), my own long poem “As an Alien in a Land of Promise,” my friend Jack Ballo’s film Destiny’s Bridge and Sherry Rubel’s fine photos. We began working together on the project almost 18 months or so ago, not being particularly sure where it might take us.

For me, the experience made clear my basic beliefs about how American corporate capitalism operates, which is to generate profits for a small number while finding ways to push costs onto others. The costs, as I’ve written, manifest in waste, which take the form not only of trash and pollution, but also create a kind of human waste — what we call homelessness is actually a byproduct of a system that disposes of what it cannot use. In this regard, homelessness is only partially about a lack of housing and low wages and, as a story in The New York Times earlier this week shows, not really about a lack of jobs. More jobs will not mean less homelessness, though it will help. Higher wages will help. More housing will help.

But as long as we continue to allow the system to be rigged so that it only values investment at the top and views those who are damaged as useless, the tent city phenomenon will continue.

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