Hank Kalet

No surprises — or not many

For the most part, the night has gone as originally expect — Democrats split, with Clinton taking New Jersey and Obama taking some of the midwestern states; Republicans backing McCain.

And then there’s Mike. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has won several Southern contests, with John McCain winning but not winning big across the board. This raises the question of whether the social conservatives are holding out on the Arizona senator and whether this portends problems for the fragmenting conservative coalition.

Another thing to watch, as the numbers continue to come in from Arizona, is how big McCain wins in his home state. Clinton, Obama, Romney and Huckabee all won big at home, and McCain’s lead is rather large in Arizona. But as I write this, he’s failed to cross the majority threshold, pulling in 49 percent of the vote there with 31 percent of the precincts reporting. That means that 51 percent of Arizona Republicans voted for someone other than their own sitting senator. Not sure if this means anything, but it does raise some interesting questions.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Bush’s legacy budget

President George W. Bush’s final federal budget can be viewed as a parting gift from an administration that has inflicted more damage on the nation than just about any other in the history of the republic.

The $3.1 trillion budget proposal calls for a $400 billion deficits in each of the next two budget years, created primarily by the tax rebates proposed as a tepid $146 billion economic stimulus and a plan and a boost in funding for defense (about $38.4 billion). The budget also calls for spending freezes and cuts in domestic programs, many of which are incredibly popular, especially among traditionally Democratic constituencies.

The budget also “calls for making permanent Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which have been widely criticized as skewed to the rich and which would begin expiring next year,” the LA Times said.

Doing so would cost Washington more than a half-trillion dollars in forgone revenue over the next five years and more than $2 trillion over the next decade, but the president has argued that they play an important role in stimulating economic growth.

USA Today put it this way:

Winners in the budget include the Pentagon, which would get nearly 8% more, and border security, up nearly 20%. Losers: Medicare and Medicaid, and domestic programs not related to national security.

And, as The Washington Post notes, the

plan omits several costly features, including tens of billions of dollars of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that could drive the deficit even higher than the president’s estimates. That would effectively delay until 2009 decisions on how to cope with short- and long-term financial problems, lawmakers and others said.

The Washington Post quotes one economist, an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama:

“A whole bunch of things they were putting off and hiding under the rug all these years are starting to pop back up,” said Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago and chief economic adviser to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). “It’s clear they’re trying to shove as much of this as possible on to the next guy.”

President Bush is projecting a surplus, but as the Post points out in today’s editorial, but that projection is based on creative accounting.

Yesterday’s promise of a small surplus by 2012 is once again premised on omitting likely costs (zero is budgeted for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) and by assuming cuts to domestic spending that are unachievable politically and, in large part, unwise as a matter of policy.

Budgets are itemized lists of priorities. The Bush budget — like all of his previous budgets — demonstrates the president’s antipathy toward the people who actually live in this country. His fealty is to the corporate order and the markets that that he and his cronies view with a religious ardor.

President Bush, as The New York Times points out in today’s editorial, has crafted a budget that is “a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president.”

Much of the budget plan is likely to be excised — the various dailies are reporting that even Republicans are a bit gunshy about moving ahead with a plan that exempts high earners from the kind of sacrifices the rest of us are being asked to make.

But the budget, as the Times points out, will have a lasting legacy:

What will definitely outlast Mr. Bush for years to come are big deficits, a military so battered by the Iraq war that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to repair it and stunted social programs that have been squeezed to pay for Mr. Bush’s misguided military adventure and his misguided tax cuts for the wealthy.

This brings me back to the USA Today description of this budget as one of winners and lowers. The winners, to put it bluntly, are the people with the cash, the people who control the corporations, who have seen their portfolios increase in value and their peronal bottom lines grow.

The loser? Just about everyone else.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Science fiction comes to life

Does anyone else find this scary? The FBI wants to create what CNN is calling a “massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics” designed to help the bureau better track “criminals and terrorists.”

The program will include “palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes.”

The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect.

The problem, as the ACLU told CNN, is that the program is not likely to be limited to nefarious elements. The technology too easily can be used for other means, including employment background checks and the like.

“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.

The Washington Post reports that the program is designed to bring together information from a variety of agencies, which law enforcement says will bring “together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals.”

This has the Electronic Privacy Information Center a bit concerned, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the Post.

“You’re giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate,” he said.

And as Steinhardt told CNN, this will affect all of us.

“This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals,” he said. “Now we’re talking about large swaths of the population — workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it’s going to be everybody.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Thoughts on the final four– the candidates, not basketball

I know the Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul campaigns may take issue with me on this, but I thought I’d offer a short overview of my thinking on the four remaining candidates as I get ready, like the rest of New Jersey and 21 other states, to cast my primary ballot. This is not an endorsement, just me thinking aloud and offering the rationale behind the choice I am planning to make tomorrow.

First, I should mention, I am a registered Democrat, a fact that has occasionally been used against me in my position as a journalist and editorial writer. My registration, however, is not about party loyalty but about presidential preference. I am not so much a Democrat as I am a progressive, a liberal, a lefty — call it what you will. This has importance at the higher levels of government, but not at the local level. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats — though not for federal office. And my papers, the Post and Press, have endorsed Republicans for local and state office.

In fact, I’ve been just as likely to vote for a third-party candidate as to vote Democrat. For instance, I voted for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000 and for a third-party candidate for governor in 2001.

I first declared party affiliation in 1984 so that I could vote in the primary that year for Gary Hart and have maintained my affiliation so I could have some say on who the Democratic nominee would be (I backed Jerry Brown in 1992), especially as the Republican Party has become rightwing establishment.

So, what does that mean for tomorrow’s vote? Obviously, given what I’ve just written, I can’t vote in the Republican Primary. Even if I could, though, I wouldn’t because none of the candidates on the GOP side share my values. All continue to support the war, want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, think the market can fix the healthcare mess and so on. Of the candidates, John McCain is the least objectionable — he has supported comprehensive and humane immigration reform and opposes torture — but he remains a believer in this war and has flipped and flopped on all matter of issues (the Bush tax cut, his criticism of the evangelicals).
That leaves the two Democrats — Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — both of whom are flawed, but both of whom are better than any of the men the party has chosen in years. So how to choose?

The media has been focusing on Obama’s “post-partisanism,” the idea that he represents a new paradigm in politics. Obama talks of change and getting beyond the simple Democrat-Republican divide, but too often his rhetoric makes it seem as if he has no underlying principles, no philosophy beyond compromise. We have reached a point in our history when we must move beyond petty partisan fights, but there are principles on which we must stand — a challenge to militarism and opposition to the upward redistribution of wealth, support for constitutional rights, civil rights and human rights, for instance — and on which we can’t compromise. I think Obama does understand and believe this and would be a steadfast defender of progressive principles. But the language he uses raises other expectations, muddying the waters.

Clinton has been portraying herself as the fighter, but her history and the history of the eight years her husband spent in the White House make it clear that they are at the other pole of this debate — purveyors of a harsh partisanship formed during the crucible of her husband’s presidency and empty of real principles. The Clintons are master compromisers who have made careers out of triangulation and you just have to track the statements she has made since 2004 to understand what I’m talking about. Remember the Iraq vote, but also consider the comments she has made over the last few years on cultural issues like violence in video games and movies (she called for a federal probe into “Grand Theft Auto”), her connection to union-busting attorneys and public relations firms, her past support for telecom reform that has benefited the bigger companies and so on.

Obviously, I have been leaning toward Obama (I had planned to vote for John Edwards, until he dropped out last week). On most of the issues, Clinton and Obama are not all that far apart. On the economy, climate change, immigration, abortion, their positions are virtually identical. On health care, Clinton offers a better plan (Obama’s lacks mandated coverage for adults), while Obama has made a rhetorical move to Clinton’s right flank — a troubling move.

In the end, I’ll be voting for Obama for two reason: Iraq and Iran. While both Obama and Clinton promise to end the war, only one has been right on the war from the beginning — Obama. Clinton voted to authorize the war with Iraq and, no matter how much she tries to explain it away, I can only view it as either a lack of judgment or a vote of political calculation, neither of which speak well for a candidate who repeatedly says she is the one who will be ready on day one to be president and commander-in-chief.

Her rhetoric on Iran raises some concerns, as well. While she is committed to diplomacy (as is Obama), she has no intention of sitting down with Iranian leaders — which would appear to make diplomacy impossible. Obama is prepared to meet face to face, a willingness that could be likened to Nixon’s opening to China or Reagan’s face-to-face meetings with Gorbachev. Iran is the United States’ chief rival in the Middle East; it is irresponsible not to talk.

So, yes, I am planning to vote for Barack Obama in the primary tomorrow, with some reservations, but no trepidation.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.