An offensive defense of military spending

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who had been advocating cuts in military spending, is now counseling against significant cuts saying that reductions would leave the nation vulnerable.

Is he kidding? United States military spending accounts for 43 percent of all military spending world wide and more than the next 14 countries combined. In fact, we could cut our spending by a third and still outspend the next biggest spender by a 5-to-1 ratio, while accounting for $1 of every $3 spent on defense world wide.

The Gates comments, made at the University of Notre Dame commencement, have nothing to do with maintaining an adequate level of defensive readiness and everything to do with fear — fear on the part of the military-industrial complex that it will lose its privileged place in Washington and its access to American tax dollars, fear on the part of politicians who count on defense contractors for campaign funding and the need to sow fear among voters who otherwise would prefer to see defense spending cut and social programs left in place.

Gates’ comments unfortunately signal a likelihood that defense spending is going to be left at historically high levels even as our friends in Washington talk about shrinking government and the programs that help those of us who live in communities like South Brunswick, Princeton and New Brunswick will be gutted to make the bond markets happy.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Going after the gas companies

Legislation that would cut aid to oil companies appears dead, thanks to a coalition of Republicans and oil state Democrats. A minority of Senators, in fact, have scuttled legislation that would end subsidies for the most profitable industry in the United States.

The lessons from this?

  • Big oil — and big business in general — has far more power than voters and consumers, thanks in part to the industry’s ability to spend massive amounts of money on political campaigns and buy candidates’ loyalty.
  • The Senate system is undemocratic, both because it gives as much power to small states with little population as it does to larger states, and because it allows the filibuster and secret holds.
  • We need a massive realignment of our politics that shifts power back to the citizenry — reform of the campaign finance system, constitutional checks on corporations, reconfiguration of the Senate, an end to the electoral college and to the two-party system.

The most important lesson, however, is that we cannot wait for government to fix things. Our elected representatives only react to threats to their jobs so we have to organize (civil disobedience and lobbying) and run aggressive primary and third-party campaigns designed to do what the Tea Party has done to the Republicans — pull the Democrats to the left.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

The selling of schools

So this is what we’ve come to — putting our school properties up for sale because we refuse to commit resources to education.

The South Brunswick School District — like far too many others in the state — is looking into selling advertising space on school property to generate revenue, an effort that has been made necessary because of state budget cuts and a general unwillingness to consider real school funding reform.

I can’t blame the district for moving in this direction, even if I find the notion of commercialized school space deplorable. If the state is not going to follow through on its obligation to make sure that all schools have the needed funding, then local districts really have no choice.

The problem is part of the larger failure in the United States to commit real money to schools. Rather than fix the problems we have in our educational system, we employ gimmicks like the advertising gambit and gut the public education system with charters and vouchers and a slew of rote tests that measure nothing.

Our public schools are our most important resource, the one unifying civic institution in a fragmenting nation. But we have little concern for that. Instead, we are prepared to gut them and turn them into just another area where commerce can be done.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Memo to banks from New York AG: No impunity

If the feds won’t dig into banking practices, then the states will have to — or, at least, New York will.

The New York attorney general has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.

Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s, office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

The charter question and Cerf’s answer

State Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf probably wishes he could take back his statements about a Princeton-South Brunswick charter school. Cerf, a gung-ho supporter of charters, raised questions about so-called boutique schools like the proposed Mandarin-language one here. (It has been approved by the state but has been unable to find a home that can get through the local zoning process.)

At a forum sponsored by NJ Spotlight last week in Newark, Cerf cited a proposed Mandarin-immersion charter in Princeton in questioning whether the harm such charters could cause to their districts outweighs their potential to enhance a “portfolio” of educational offerings.

“I think you really can have a very serious debate, the outcome of which is unclear, as to whether that rounds out the portfolio or impairs the success of the overall district,” Cerf said, referring to the Princeton International Academy Charter School, which hopes to open in South Brunswick in September and draw students from that district, Princeton and West Windsor-Plainsboro.

Cerf was correct — and not just about the Princeton International Academy Charter School. The charter school movement requires far more scrutiny than state educational officials have been willing to give it, and this goes for those working both for Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Jon Corzine.

The argument in favor of charters is that it enhances freedom of choice for parents, but it also offers the state a convenient out when it comes to fixing public schools. Rather than do the hard work — which would include modernizing buildings to a much greater degree than has been imagined, training teachers and paying them enough to stay in the public sector, reducing class sizes and doing what needs to be done to improve school safety (and this list does not include the societal changes required to put poor kids in a position to learn) — the state is giving children of motivated parents a way to escape failing schools. This does nothing to fix the failures, but consigns those students unlucky enough to escape to even worse conditions.

So, let me rephrase the question Cerf was asking, but apply it to charter schools more generally: Do charter schools enhance or hinder the quality of public school districts?

  • 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.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.