Hank Kalet

So much for the separation of powers

Newt Gingrich is calling for federal judges to explain their decisions to Congress — a move that clearly violates the Constitution and would compromise the independence of the federal bench. Gingrich, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, told the reporters today that his background as a historian he “may understand this better than lawyers.”

I know liberals view a Gingrich nomination as good for the president’s chances for re-election, but it is far too dangerous to allow such an extremist to get that close to the White House.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The wrong medicine

Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, is considered one of the Senate’s staunchest Medicare defenders. So what is he doing working with U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan on a plan to unravel the federal health-care program?

From the Times:
The new Wyden-Ryan proposal would make major structural changes in Medicare and limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program.

Under the proposal, known as premium support, Medicare would subsidize premiums charged by private insurers that care for beneficiaries under contract with the government.
Congress would establish an insurance exchange for Medicare beneficiaries. Private plans would compete with the traditional Medicare program and would have to provide at least the same benefits. The federal contribution in each region would be based on the cost of the second-cheapest option, whether that was a private plan or traditional Medicare.
In addition, the growth of Medicare would be capped; in general, spending would not be allowed to increase more than the growth of the economy, plus 1 percentage point — a much slower rate of increase than Medicare has historically experienced.

The plan is supposed to open the existing system to competition and lower prices, which seems unlikely. The problem with Medicare is not that it lacks competition, but that it is far too small a program and only includes the segment of society that uses the most health care. What we know about Medicare, when compared with other insurance options, is that it has much lower overhead than the private sector. Its costs have been rising not because of inefficiency but because health-care costs more generally are skyrocketing.

We need to stop talking about Medicare as if it is separate from the larger health-care system and look to it as a solution for the failures of the private insurance industry. With nearly 50 million Americans lacking insurance and private insurers damaging the profitability of American businesses, it is clear that private insurers are not the solution to rising premiums. They are the problem.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Chris Paul should be a Laker

I don’t like the Lakers. Rooting for them is like rooting for Wall Street, or the Yankees. The Lakers — along with the Celtics — own more NBA rings than the rest of the league combined.

So, when I say that the league’s decision to nix the Chris Paul deal is bad for basketball, you can believe that I mean it was bad for basketball.

You can look at this a number of ways, but no through no lens can this be said to make sense.

Chris Paul is a Hornet and a pending free agent. He can walk away form New Orleans at season’s end with the Hornets getting nothing in return. And he is going to do just that. His preference would be a big-market team like the Knicks or Lakers. This deal would have netted the Hornets several good players, including the multidimensional Lamar Odom. The Rockets, who would send two players to New Orleans, would get Pau Gasol and the Lakers would be able to pair Kobe Bryant with Paul in a superstar backcourt.

Does that make the Lakers the de facto champions? They still have to play the games. And it’s not like the Lakers were to get Paul for nothing.

So, if the trade was not nixed because of a lack of balance, why nix it? The only reason, it seems, is that Paul would be heading to the glamor squad and, as Dave Zirin points out in his blog at The Nation and Michael Wibon points out on ESPN, this was about control.

“What eats at many NBA owners is this,” Wilbon writes is

They aren’t NFL owners. They don’t share a big enough cut of the revenues. They don’t have an unending stream of television money. Their arenas aren’t at about 95 percent capacity. They aren’t a national obsession. And their small-market teams aren’t flush, in most cases, like the Packers or Steelers are. They can’t just cut players and get rid of their salaries, which aren’t guaranteed in the NFL. They want control, big control, like the NFL teams have and they don’t. They don’t want the LeBrons and D-Wades hooking up on their own terms.

Zirin was even more blunt about it. The owners, he says, have a stake in defining players and their talents not as labor, but the product of labor. The players, in this definition, means that they are incidental and have no control.

This is why players, always to media outrage, turn at times to the metaphor of slavery and a plantation to explain their predicament. Not because they are comparing themselves to those who suffered under bondage but because owners constantly contest whether they are in fact the masters of their own talents. For players, it’s unclear if they are the occupier of their own gifts and hard work or whether they are the occupied. The NBA’s decision to nix the Chris Paul deal shows that they have perfect clarity on the question. They own the talent and by definition can assert the right of occupation.

In the end, this is going to doom the league to future labor strife and an increasingly poisonous relationship that could ultimately damage the always fragile connection between the fans and the teams for which they root.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

On food drives and poverty

Matthew Yglesias at Slate makes a compelling argument against the traditional food drive — but it’s one that, in the end, I can’t support. The argument — that donated money makes more sense — has some validity in larger communities, but in areas with smaller food banks, money can create a strain.

Organizations like Rise in Hightstown and the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton rely on both food and money, with money going a lot farther toward meeting the needs of local communities because they can buy in bulk. But smaller organizations like the South Brunswick Food Pantry (which also has a trust fund that collects monetary donations for other services) and Skeet’s Pantry in Cranbury do not have the manpower or economies of scale to be able to take advantage of bulk buying power.

The greater issue is our societal reliance on food banks and soup kitchens to plug holes in the safety net. Poverty is a social issue and is created by larger cultural trends with impacts that reach out beyond the immediate families into local neighborhoods and beyond into the larger community.

Relying on private organizations to address larger societal problems is destined to leave us chasing our tales on the poverty issue, always a step behind, the solution just a step out of reach.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Cenk Ugyur seeks change in constitution

My latest post on Patch is based on an interview with Cenk Uguyur, host of The Young Turks. He has started the Wolf PAC and makes a convincing case as to the need for change:

“It is not the most important issue, it is the only issue,” he told me last week. “Until we solve the problem of all this money we will not have an honest debate in the country. Our democracy is in big, big trouble.”

As he would say, “Have at it, hoss!”

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.