Hank Kalet

Another voice for impeachment

Congressman Robert Wexler, D-Fla. — the Florida co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — today announced that he has signed on to support the Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush, introduced this week by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.

“President Bush deliberately created a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people and the charges detailed in this impeachment resolution indicate an unprecedented abuse of executive power,” Wexler said. “A decision by Congress to pursue impeachment is not an option, it is a sworn duty. It is time for Congress to stand up and defend the Constitution against the blatant violations and illegalities of this Administration. Our Founding Fathers bestowed upon Congress the power of impeachment, and it is now time that we use it to defend the rule of law from this corrupt Administration.”

Here are Kucinich’s 35 counts and a video of him reading them in Congress.

In the euphoria surrounding the Obama nomination — the first black presidential candidate to represent a major party — and the discussion of what Hillary Clinton and her supporters might do, we have allowed an issue that played out as subtext to much of the primary campaign to fall from sight: Race.

Andrew Greeley, writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, cuts to the chase, reminding us that what we saw during the primary — the veiled playing of the race card by former President Bill Clinton in South Carolina, the pandering to “hard-working whites” (implication being, of course, that non-whites might not be hard-working), etc. — will not go away.

(R)acism permeates American society and hides itself under many different disguises. The nomination of an African-American candidate was a near-miracle. Only the innocent and the naive think that the November election will not be about race.

The odds against the replication of the primary miracle in November, even against a disgraced and discredited Republic administration, are very high.

Race will silently trump the war, the economy, the cost of gasoline, the disgust with President Bush. One may wish that it will not be so, that if Obama loses it will not be because of the color of his skin but because the country genuinely wants another Republican administration.

Greeley is not wishing for a McCain win — on the contrary, he is just reminding us that the issue of race is the 800-pound gorilla in the room and that progressives interested in seeing Barack Obama, and the candidate and his campaign, will have to work that much more diligently to overcome the historical blight of racism.

Rain, rain, go away

No, it’s not raining here in Central Jersey, but it has been raining almost nonstop in the Midwest, wreaking havoc on the region.

I received a couple of text messages yesterday from my sister, Sandy, who lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, which is facing some dire conditions, according to The New York Times:

Officials in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ordered the evacuation of parts of the city as the Cedar River continued to rise. In nearby Waterloo, part of a railroad bridge collapsed into the river and officials decided to evacuate some neighborhoods because of the rising waters.

Emergency sandbags in Cedar Falls, another municipality along the Cedar River, succeeded in keeping the water at bay, but officials called for extra volunteers to man the defenses. Power in the town of Vinton, population 5,000, was turned off, and evacuations were ordered for parts of town where water was three feet deep.

The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier offers this report:

Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley has declared an immediate mandatory evacuation in the area bounded by the following streets: From West Sixth Street to West 18th Street and from the Cedar River to Jefferson Street.

Residents and businesses should leave immediately. People affected are reminded to bring medications, medical assistant devices, important documents and a change of clothes.

An evacuation center is open at the McLeod Center on the UNI campus. The center is for initial processing for long term and immediate needs.

A Red Cross shelter remains open at the UNI West Gym off Hudson Road in Cedar Falls.The evacuation is necessary because the city’s lift stations in the area are not keeping up with ground water runoff. This is not due to levee breaches or river water.

Homes and buildings in this area are in imminent danger of flooding and the strong possibility of isolating people from getting out.

The sandbagging operations at the Street Department will be relocated to the Iowa Department of Transportation Maintenance Shed on West Ridgeway Avenue and Highway 63.

Not pretty.

Here is the string of texts between my sister and I yesterday:

Sandy: Downtown Cedar Falls evacuated. Flooded.

Me: Oh man, I was wondering about that this morning but it sounded like most of the damage was southeast of you.

Sandy: For now. Electricity may shut but that should be it.

Let’s hope so.

Runner’s diary, Wednesday

It was hotter than I’d expected this morning, but near perfect weather for a run. I did four miles in 35:40, trying to push the pace but facing serious opposition from my right achilles and knee.

My hope is to get to 22 miles this week — one lone run and a short. This got me thinking about the general rules runners use to increase miles on a week-to-week basis. There appears to be two schools of thought — one saying you shouldn’t increase mileage by more than 10 percent a week and the other saying that, once you get to a decent level (15miles or so), you can increase mileage by one per day of running.

Under the first scenario, I would only be able to increase my mileage this week from 14 to between 15 and 16 miles because I had a light week last week.

Under the second scenario, I could add five miles — to 19.

I’m actually taking a third approach and basing my mileage increase on some recent weeks (17) and adding a mile a day for the week. We’ll see.

In any case, readers of this blog should chime in on this with their approaches.

Fixer-upper on affordable housing

Legislation that would change the way the state approaches providing affordable housing — for the bettere — is moving through the state Legislature.

A state Senate panel yesterday cleared a bill that would eliminate regional contribution agreements and create a statewide housing fund in an effort to get about 115,000 units built.

The bill accomplishes several things:

It eliminates RCAs, which allow rich towns to buy their way out of providing housing by paying poorer communities to build a portion of their state-mandated obligation. Both Cranbury and Monroe have used RCAs in the past.
It offsets the money that urban communities would lose by creating a statewide housing fund — funded by a 2.5 percent fee on the value of new commercial development — that would help pay for affordable units.
It sets aside about $20 million for what are being called “work-force units,” essentially expanding the program to higher incomes.
It requires that land preservation be taken into account when setting a municipality’s obligation — something that could help limit the size of Cranbury’s future obligations.

Reform is obviously needed and this legislation is a good first step that, hopefully, will lead to new affordable housing being built. But it is only a first step.

It is obvious that the current affordable housing program does not work. It does not provide enough housing, while encouraging sprawl — a combination that does little more than anger suburban voters and officials and diminish support.

The current rules require towns that have new jobs created to build housing — a seemingly logical approach, but one that has shipwrecked on the shoals of questionable calculations. In theory, if a town like Cranbury or South Brunswick create new jobs, the town should provide housing. Assuming that East Windsor or North Brunswick or some other community will provide housing for the workers creates a tax imbalance — South Brunswick would get the revenue but the neighboring community would pay the cost of educating the new students or providing other services.

But that’s not practical. Jobs and housing are regional concerns and should be viewed that way on a policy level, though that will require a change in the way we raise and spend money — altering the tax structure (moving away from property taxes to an income tax) and/or instituting significant revenue sharing so that towns that build warehousing share some of the taxes they generate with towns that provide housing.