Congress – Hank Kalet

Get ready for redistricting part 2

New Jersey, thanks to the shifting national population, has lost a congressional seat — a reduction that will take place with the 2012 election. That means someone is going to lose his job.

Mark Magyar, in NJ Spotlight today, outlines some of the possibilities — all of which start with the four most southern districts (three Republicans and a Democrat) staying somewhat in tact. The remaining nine will need to be squeezed, though two — Donald Payne’s and Albio Sires — are likely to expand a hair and not change their political composition.

That leaves seven Congressmen in the redistricting crosshairs. The four Democrats — Rush Holt, Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman — have held their seats for some time and are highly popular in their districts. Two of the Republicans — Scott Garret and Rodney Frelinghysen are longtime veterans, while Leonard Lance is completing his second two-year term and would seem to be the man most likely to lose out.

New Jersey has been a relatively reliable blue state since 1992, when it tipped to Bill Clinton in the presidential race. Democrats have won every senate race in the state since 1978 and Democrats have held a majority of the state’s congressional seats for better than a decade.

Republicans, however, have been making gains in the state again, though not by much. Chris Christie won the governor’s race with less than 50 percent of the vote and the Democrats managed to lose just one legislative seat (though Republicans captured a majority of votes cast for legislative candidates statewide).

The final shape of the map will, in all likelihood, not shift power much in the state. Holt and Pallone, unless the new districts gut their basic core of support, seem unlikely to lose to Lance.

In the end, the current 7-6 split is likely to move to 7-5 — which will do little to alter the larger Congressional makeup or change the impact that New Jersey has in national politics.

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.

Giving states the veto is a bad idea

I would dismiss this as a joke, but given the looniness we’ve seen grow on the issue of federal power it obviously is not a joke.

The this, in this case, is an amendment that would grant state legislatures the power to repeal federal law — two-thirds of all state legislatures would need to vote for repeal. It has the backing of folks in 12 states (the story says legislatures, including New Jersey, when it needs to be made clear that full legislatures are not on board in most cases) and some in Congress — which leaves me wondering if anyone is thinking clearly out there.

The amendment is being pushed as a way to trim federal sails and force national lawmakers to consider the impact of their actions on the states, which sounds logical in theory but would create chaos in practice and do little more than further empower small states and, more ominously, make progressive reform impossible.

As with the filibuster, the threat of a repeal vote might be enough to stall action — consider what might have happened to civil rights legislation had this been in effect in the mid-1960s. The reality is that the federal government has no choice but to step in sometimes — to address questions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, to impose regulatory rules that can act as a baseline and so on.

Giving a veto to the states will create a downward pull on all of these issues, because there will be no incentive for states with the weakest environmental regulations, those with out workplace safety laws, without a minimum wage, etc., to improve, no minimum standards to meet, etc. States with effective laws will have little choice but to gut their own regulatory apparatus to keep business from fleeing to the states of least resistance.

This craziness, of course, is brought to you by the same people who believe that democracy would be enhanced by taking the right to vote for U.S. Senators away from the people and handing it to the very state legislatures that have proven inept and corrupt. (Does anyone really think that the people we send to Trenton would do a better job picking Senators than the voters? Does anyone think that the people in Trenton will be thinking of us and not of themselves?)

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.

This man is running for Congress

The man standing second from the right in the above photo — Republican Rich Iott — is a candidate for Ohio’s Ninth district Congressional seat. And yes, the Tea Party favorite is dressed in a Nazi SS uniform as part of a re-enactment group (read this blog post from The Atlantic).

I’d laugh if there wasn’t a chance that a man who played at being a Nazi soldier could end up in the U.S. House of Representatives. Just too freakishly weird.

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.