Hank Kalet

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.

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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.

Jocelyn cheering during 2013.

I wrote this poem eight years ago, next week, a week after my niece Jocelyn was born. It was published in the Artsbridge/River Poets 2007 Anthology, The Eclectic Muse in 2007. Its style is markedly different from my current style, but I post it today because it is Jocelyn’s 8th birthday. Happy birthday, Joss.
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TINY FINGERS

for Jocelyn, seven days old

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,

as 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.

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I posted Saturday about the decision by FIU in Florida not to issue press credentials to the Miami Herald beat reporter, saying that the move was part of a larger trend in which organizations use access to punish reporters for coverage that is perceived as negative.

Today, as reported in the Herald and tweeted by Jim Romenesko, FIU has issued credentials to the reporter. Good call.

FIU decides to credential Miami Herald's David J. Neal for the rest of the football season. http://t.co/3QrI8doeAd

— Romenesko (@romenesko) September 2, 2014

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