Sunday poetry at the South Brunswick librarywith yours truly

I’ll be reading Sunday at the South Brunswick Public Library as part of its monthly poetry reading series (disclosure: I’m the organizer). Here is the release from the library:

South Brunswick, NJ – Hank Kalet — managing editor of The South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press, and an award-winning journalist and political columnist — will be the guest poet on Sunday, January 20 at South Brunswick’s monthly series of Sunday poetry readings. The program, sponsored by the South Brunswick Arts Commission, in cooperation with the South Brunswick Public Library, starts at 2 p.m. in the Library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction.

Kalet is a longtime South Brunswick resident whose poetry and prose have appeared in The Aquarian Weekly, The Progressive Populist, City Belt, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Big Scream, Big Smile, The Writer’s Gallery and numerous other journals.

His chapbook, Suburban Pastoral, was published in 2006 by Voices of Reason. He is the former editor of the literary journals Flux, The Subterranean and The Other Half. His column, Dispatches, appears weekly in the Post and the Press, and he writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. His latest poetry will be appearing in the forthcoming issues of Lips, The Writer’s Gallery and a new literary journal to be published by Middlesex County College.

Admission to the poetry readings is free, though a donation of a nonperishable food item, which will be given to the South Brunswick Food Pantry, is encouraged.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Tax-cutting our way out of recession

President George W. Bush seems to know only one song when it comes to the economy — cut taxes and all will be well.

His rather vague speech today centered on rebates without saying who would get them or how big they would be. But he made it clear that tax cuts were his solution to the nation’s growing economic woes:

“This growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth, and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy.” He said it should include tax incentives for American businesses, including small businesses, to encourage major investments in their enterprises this year, and “direct and rapid income tax relief for the American people.”

Given his record on tax cuts — selling them (falsely) as huge savings to middle-class voters while making sure his cronies well up the income ladder benefited to the greatest degree — one shouldn’t expect too much. Plus, there is some question as to how effective these kinds of rebates tend to be.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, is critical — and makes some strong points:

In a letter to Reid and Pelosi today, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said Bush’s proposals appear to be “too heavily weighted towards tax cuts over much-needed spending, do not address crucial problems facing working families, and do not target tax benefits to those families who need them most and will spend them fastest.”

Unions also are worried that Bush’s proposed tax relief for businesses “would not be sufficiently timely and, because of the linkages between federal and state tax codes, could trigger economically depressing budget cuts and tax increases by state governments,” Sweeney said.

Citing lower property and sales tax revenues in many states, the letter urged Congress to “provide at least $30 billion in aid to the states in the form of revenue-sharing grants and increases in the Medicaid match.” It also called for $40 billion to accelerate “ready-to-go construction projects” such as repairs to schools and bridges.
In addition, Sweeney said, Congress should address “the most fundamental underlying causes of our current economic weakness,” notably “the stagnation of ordinary Americans’ incomes” and a lack of “effective regulation of the mortgage and financial services industries.”

Basically, the president is hoping that handing a little cash to most of us and a lot of cash to a handful of us will make the economic uncertainty hanging over the nation go away. Exactly how much did he say he wanted for the Brooklyn Bridge?

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Joe loves Rudy

I meant to post this video yesterday — just happened to catch it while running on the treadmill — but had some early computer problems and then forgot.

It’s an interview with Rudy Giuliani by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that essentially is a love letter to the former New York mayor. Pay particular attention to the rapt attention Brzezinski pays to Lord Mayor of 9/11 and the way Scarborough puts his adulatory statements into the form of a question. Yuck.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.