State – Page 2 – Hank Kalet

Battling over bad reforms

I’ve written about this often, so I’ll just say that the battle between the governor and the state Legislature over the proposed tool kits — “I say, ‘pass mine,’ one says; ‘no, pass mine,’ the other chimes in” — is pretty meaningless. Real reforms will do more than nibble around the edges of the problem and scapegoat public workers.

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.

A popular governor without a mandate?

There are a lot of things one could say about Tuesday’s win by Linda Greenstein in the race to finish the final year of the 14th District state Senate seat, which had been held by Republicans for 19 years.

First, Greenstein had much better name recognition — she had been in the Assembly for about 10 years, while her opponent — Tom Goodwin — was a Hamilton councilman who lost an Assembly race for the same seat in 2007.

Second, we could make the argument made by Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who claims that the win is an indication that voters want the governor and Legislature to make nice (they might, but I’m not sure how the Greenstein win demonstrates this, given

Or, you could argue something I’ve been saying about Christie since he was sworn in: He may be governor, but he does not have a mandate. Remember, he won with less than 50 percent of the vote and had no coattails in 2009. And, while he may be popular in the polls, he had little impact on the races in New Jersey on Tuesday. In fact, the Greenstein win means a larger Democratic majority than Christie faced just a week ago — not exactly a glowing endorsement of his approach to fixing the state’s problems.

And the Democrats won all four special elections on the ballot Tuesday — two Assembly seats (5th and 31st) and two Senate seats (Greenstein and Donald Norcross in the 5th) — while the GOP captured county government in Bergen County and regained the third district Congressional seat won by Democrat Jon Adler two years.

If anything, New Jersey politics has grown even more muddled than before.

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.

And this surprises us because?

We are facing high unemployment, which has sapped public budgets and led to major public-sector layoffs — and we are surprised when the thousands of public workers now out of work are slowing the economic recovery.

Economists at Rutgers University say losses in public jobs are, in part, slowing the Garden State’s economic comeback.

The findings will be released today during the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service forecast and conference in New Brunswick.

The study finds New Jersey has lost 269,000 jobs since January 2008. About 45,000 alone disappeared from May through September.

Economics Advisory Service director Nancy Mantell says New Jersey has lost 42,400 public sector jobs since May. More than half came from local governments.

It’s simple math: If you add more unemployed people to the mass of those already unemployed, you have more unemployed people — and that means there are fewer people who can buy houses, cars and other goods, making it less likely that businesses will be able to hire and so on. It is why many economists have pushed public spending — direct aid to workers, infrastructure projects, etc. — as the best approach to getting the economy moving in the right direction.

It appears, of course, that we are going to continue trying this other tack for a while, which means we shouldn’t expect an economic rebirth any time soon.

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.

Budget cuts hurt everyone but the rich

Anyone who thought cutting the state budget would be easy should read this story. These job cuts will add to the state’s unemployment rate and, along with the tuition hikes already planned, take one of the better state college and university systems in the country and weaken it. But that’s alright, because the state’s richest taxpayers didn’t have to pony up anymore in taxes this year.

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.

More bad news

I know this is a big news story, but is it really a surprise to anyone? We know the state faces another massive shortfall, which made it fairly certain that no one would be seeing more state money come their way.

And yet, one has to wonder if there is some way this governor can find money for schools to keep districts from another round of teacher layoffs and to minimize tax increases.

The difficulty I have with the way in which Gov. Chris Christie has gone about his budgeting is that he has failed to engage the state in a discussion of priorities and instead has moved forward with his own conservative goals while allowing taxpayers to assume that he is only cutting waste.

I have no real sense that New Jerseyans understand that slashing aid to schools and towns means an equivalent slashing of services. Fewer teachers mean larger class sizes, while schools have had to resort to pay-to-play for sports and extracurricular activities, fewer elective courses and less building maintenance to offset their lost aid. Municipal governments face similar problems. (Imposing spending caps do little to address these problems, but certainly make the politicians feel good about themselves.)

Should the state increase income taxes on higher-income residents? What about corporations? What if the higher tax rate prevented cuts to health-care, AIDS and senior programs?

And what about consolidating municipal and school services and outright mergers of towns? The governor alludes to this idea, but has not forced it onto the agenda.

Part of the problem, of course, is the decaying status of the state’s newspaper industry — layoffs and cutbacks have forced a joint Statehouse bureau into existence, which has left both The Star-Ledger and Bergen Record unable to perform their watchdog functions with the same zeal as in the past.

We need to have these discussions; if we don’t, we are just shooting in the dark, which makes it more likely that we will hit innocent bystanders.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.