Hank Kalet

Ruth, who died on Sunday, was both an old-school woman-behind-the-man and a force in her own right, a school teacher and administrator at a time when the township began to undergo major changes, a woman who was a serious advocate for a town in which she spent her entire life.

Ruth kept tabs on South Brunswick schools, correctly predicting the enrollment increases that were to come and pushign the district to craft building plans that accounted for the growth. That sometimes meant larger projects and bigger price tags, but she knew taxpayers were going to have to pay one way or the other.

In many ways, she is the reason the district did so well in dealing with growth.

One thing that always struck me about Ruth was the way she would let others make her case — whether they be her husband, Joe Spataro, or advocates like Lew Schwartz, Frank Chrinko and others. Ruth would do the work, would sit with officials, but when it came time for meetings, she would remain a regal and quiet presence in the council room.

She was a remarkable woman who will be missed.

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

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See you in September

Glenn Greenwald, on his Salon blog, reminds us that the much-anticipated September report by Gen. David Petreaus is likely to be nothing more than warmed-over Bush talking points. His evidence? An interview with conservative sycophant Hugh Hewitt.

Greenwald writes:

Despite the Mandate Orthodoxy that Gen. Petraeus be treated as the Objective, Unassailably Credible Oracle for how we are doing in Iraq and whether we are winning, his track record of quite dubious claims over the last several years about the war strongly negates that view. It ought to go without saying that no military commander — particularly in the midst of a disastrous four-year war — is entitled to blind faith and to be placed above being questioned. It is not only proper, but critically necessary, to subject happy war claims from the military to great scrutiny.

In general, military commanders do not typically pronounce their own strategies to have failed; quite the opposite. The need for skepticism here is particularly acute given that there are plenty of Generals with equally impressive military pedigrees who disagree vigorously with Petraeus. War supporters — who are attempting now to make criticisms of Petraeus off-limits — long disputed the claims and views of Generals Casey and Abaziad, often quite vigorously, even insultingly. The statements about war from military commanders ought to be subjected to every bit as much scrutiny and skepticism as anyone else’s.

But Petraeus in particular has demonstrated that his statements merit particularly potent scrutiny. So many of the misleading government claims over the past several years about The Great Victory we are Achieving in Iraq have been based upon optimistic claims from Petraeus that turned out to be highly questionable, to put it generously.

It seems pretty obvious that expecting objectivity in September is just foolishness.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.