Bashing the public schools

More from The Star-Ledger's Bob Braun on the Facebook Newark grant and the disingenuousness of school reformers, who refuse to let the facts get in the way of their bashing of public schools.

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Dispatches: Keeping the public in public education

This week's Dispatches column focuses on the school reform movement -- which seems to have as its aim the dismantling of public education.

Here is something that ran Tuesday on the Education Week Web site from Diane Ravitch, a former charter supporter who has come around to see the reform movement for what it is.

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Second-class citizenship

There is little to soften the ugliness of this story. Assuming that the allegations are true, what we have is a case of two college students having so little regard for the privacy of a third student that they essentially laid a trap in the hopes of catching him on videotape that could be posted to the Internet.

That the victim apparently committed suicide following the release of the video once again speaks to the stigma that gays and lesbians are still forced to deal with every day.

The facts are these:

Two recent graduates of West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional High School have been charged with secretly recording video of another person having sex and transmitting the video over the Internet. The victim, apparently one of the accused’s roommates, has committed suicide since the videos were made public.


Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro and Molly W. Wei, also 18, of West Windsor, were charged Tuesday with two counts each of invasion of privacy. The two are students at Rutgers University’s Piscataway campus and are graduates of West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional High School North.

Mr. Ravi and Ms. Wei are accused of secretly placing a video camera in another student’s room in a dormitory and transmitting the video online, according to an announcement from Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan and Rutgers University Police Chief Rhonda Harris. The prosecutor’s office said the pair transmitted “a live image” of an 18-year-old student.

Another Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood, committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, Mr. Clementi’s family confirmed through their attorney, Paul Mainardi of Brown & Connery in Woodbury.

Mr. Mainardi’s office refused to confirm quotes attributed to him in other publications stating Mr. Clementi and Mr. Ravi were roommates. But the statement he released did say the family’s “representatives are cooperating fully with the ongoing criminal investigations of two Rutgers University students.”

A body had not been discovered Wednesday afternoon.

The story is difficult to digest. What could have been going through the minds of the two students who have been charged? And why would something like this drive a gay student to suicide?

I'm going to posit something: When you systematically and publicly deny equal citizenship to a class of people -- in this case, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered -- and a significant portion of your political culture believes it is OK to publicly denigrate that class, you create a situation in which that class can be targeted, in which the privacy of the class members is of no consequence.

The gay community has been denied the right to legally marry in most states. LGBTs are prohibited from serving their country in the military. And they continue to be looked upon with derision, as freaks or worse.

Our unwillingness to grant LGBTs full rights is a societal/cultural admission that we think of them as less worthy than the rest of us. It allows the stigma to remain in place and allows the hate to continue to flow.

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Tony Curtis, rest in peace

Sometimes we forget that screen idols, the iconic faces, carry a depth with them on the screen. Tony Curtis was like that. It was easy, sometimes, to think of him solely as a heart throb, but his acting credits offer proof of his incredible depth as an actor.

Tony Curtis, rest in peace.

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Motor City mediocrity

I am a fan, as many of the readers of this blog know, of police shows -- for the same reason that the director Sidney Lumet likes to make movies about cops. There is a built-in tension, built-in conflict that creates an energy that can carry the narrative.

My favorite shows -- Homicide, NYPD Blue (the first season, in particular), Barney Miller, The Naked City, even the less serious Starsky and Hutch and the '70s PI shows -- used the crime motif to create this tension and play characters off each other in interesting ways.

So I was interested to see what Detroit 1-8-7 had to offer. I missed the opening episode last week, but caught it last night -- and was tremendously disappointed. It wasn't because it was a bad show. It was, in fact, pretty decent. It's just that we've seen it before. All of the standard tropes were there -- the cranky veteran detective, the put-upon squad leader, the new man on the job trying to win his colleagues over. The stereotypes were shuffled -- women were in charge, for instance -- but it didn't go much beyond what we might have seen on any other show. And while we are watching something alleged to be taking place in Detroit -- an overwhelmingly black city -- the show could take place just about anywhere.

The best cop shows play off their home base -- Homicide using the specific political dysfunction of Baltimore, for instance. That's what makes Memphis Beat so interesting -- its locale cannot be mistaken for many other places. It is a show built on particulars.

Detroit 1-8-7 might get better -- it certainly has the potential. It's just not there at the moment.

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The false promise of education reform

Bob Braun continues his excellent string of columns on education, reminding his readers that comparing education spending district to district can be a foolish and misleading enterprise just as the assault on public education and the call for massive restructuring of schools is foolish and counterproductive.

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Thoughts on Feingold -- from Wisconsin

I have been keeping an eye on the Senate polls -- in particular, those in California and Wisconsin where two of the most liberal members of Sentate are up for re-election. It is looking more and more like Barbara Boxer is going to hold on (though it is incredibly close).

In Wisconsin, however, Russ Feingold, the conscience of the Senate, is down in the polls. So I asked my friend Rob Stolzer, an artist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, for his thoughts on the race. Here is what he had to say:

I haven't followed things all that closely yet, as there weren't any real races for Dems in the primaries, outside of Lieutenant Governor. I know that Ron Johnson (not the old Giants running back, unfortunately) is leading Feingold in the polls right now, but it's still pretty early. Many folks believe he got a big initial bounce from winning the GOP primary.


Here's the thing about Wisconsin: it's largely a conservative state, but has large pockets of liberalism. Former governor Tommy Thompson described Madison as an island of liberals surrounded by conservatives. Madison, Milwaukee, Appleton, and many of the university cities are far more left-leaning than the rest of the state. It's always been enough to pull Feingold through, but it's usually very close. Folks on the right will say that Feingold is either a do-nothing senator, or too liberal, and needs to go. They'll also say that he's living off of McCain-Feingold, and that's it for him. Personally, I see a senator who sticks to his guns and has paid a political price for it. He was the only one to vote against the Patriot Act, refusing to be a knee-jerk reactionary. Feingold also voted against the Finance Services Reform bill, which was highly touted by Dems. I saw him at a town hall meeting at a local high school a few months ago, and he stated that he wouldn't support the bill because it didn't go far enough. He wanted to see the Glass-Steagall Act reinstated, which went much further in it's reforms.

I find it interesting that in Wisconsin, with such a small Jewish population, that we have two Jewish senators. I've run into folks who have never met a Jew before they met me, and yet, we have two Jewish senators. Like many other states, I'm seeing more of the extremes of the parties, though the GOP is louder right now.

Personally, I think Feingold will retain his seat in the senate. Madison is large enough to withstand the battering of the conservative chatter.

Let's hope he is right.

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More on the Newark grant and what it means

I should have passed along this column from The Star-Ledger's Bob Braun, who has been covering Newark schools for years. He sums up the basic concerns as well as anything I've read so far.

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Public education, private money -- what comes next?

I want to applaud the grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Newark schools -- the city desperately needs the cash infusion -- but the use of private money only underscores the dysfunction built into our educational funding system.

The fact is that urban schools are in desparate need of money (the per pupil estimates that the state provides are misleading because they gloss over the very real and costly challenges that districts like Newark face -- security, higher maintenance and utility costs associated with older facilities, etc, special ed, basic skills and ESL programs), and to begrudge the city this windfall would be callous.

But the grant allows the state -- and by the state I mean both the people who run the state and all of us who live here -- to pretend that we have no role in ensuring that Newark (and New Brunswick and Jersey City and Camden, etc.) have enough money to pay for good teachers, clean and safe buildings, etc. Instead, we are looking at a private grant that will allow Mayor Corey Booker and Gov. Chris Christie to move ahead with so-called merit pay (so-called because it has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with undercutting the teachers union), charter schools and vouchers, aid to private schools -- reforms that have more to do with dismantling public education than anything else.

So, I am happy for the children of Newark who will get some short-term help, but have to wonder what this is going to mean for the kids in Camden and Trenton who won't be seeing a dime, but who will be dealing with the fallout of the Newark experiment.

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One of the worst TV shows I've ever seen

Yes, Outsourced is as bad as you might expect and as offensive as this writer says (we are watching it on DVR and I'm not sure why).

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A cinematic poem hits the silver screen

I don't think I've ever come across a poem being converted to film -- aside from the major epics like Beowulf or The Odyssey. But Howl -- based on this interview -- looks like it will blaze some new ground.

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Steve King protests too much

Steve King, the Iowa Republican, is not a happy camper (see TPM). Stephen Colbert is the cause, the Megyn Kelly is King's enabler. And buried within this clip is something the anti-immigrant right needs to address: The notion that illegals are taking American jobs, as if Americans are clamouring to work the fields and clean toilets.

What Colbert did was unmask the GOP by wearing his mask. It was a stellar performance, when you get down to it.

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From @rollingstone: "Watch the Trailer for Springsteen’s ‘Darkness’ Doc"

Trailer

I mentioned the documentary yesterday, but you can watch it at Rollingstone.com.

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Rolling Stone gives props to PREX

Rolling Stone lists the Princeton Record Exchange among the top 25 places in the country to find vinyl. And, yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

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The joke is on Congress -- or is it, 'the joke is Congress'?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Stephen Colbert testifies before Congress. In character. And the Republicans just don't get it, nor do many of the Democrats. Crazy stuff -- funny like Tom Toles is funny.

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Happy birthday to The Boss

Bruce Springsteen turns 61 today -- which makes me feel old. I can remember when I first became interested in Springsteen's music 32 years ago (at age 16) with the release of Darkness on the Edge of Town. The album had an edge and life that much of what I was listening to at the time lacked, and it sent me back to his earlier albums and forced me to rethink my whole approach to music.

I don't have HBO, so I won't be able to watch the Springsteen documentary until the special edition box set comes out in November. The box set -- three CDs (a remastered version of the album and alternate takes of the originally planned album The Promise, along with two DVDs of documentary and live footage) is the kind of release Springsteen-ologists would have liked to see when The Boss issued the 30th-anniversary Born to Run package five years ago.

One of the things I'm interested in is the sound. Darkness was a shift in production from BTR, moving from a massive wall-of-sound approach to something more nuanced in which the individual instruments stood out more. It was intentional, according to interviews I read, and it fit the dark, desperate material perfectly.

On Darkness, Springsteen moved away from the sprawling lyrics chronicaling the last-gasps of youth that characterized his first three efforts and focused on the broken dreams plaguing working-class 20-somethings -- the dead-end jobs and fruitless attempts to hold on to a moment in time that could not be held onto -- a set of themes that would govern his songwriting for the next decade.

I won't call it poetry -- rock lyrics are not poetry -- but Darkness flows from a poetic spirit and is part of my poetic foundation.

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Getting tough on ethics scofflaws

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora has upped the ante on ethics reform in tbe New Jersey Legislature. The Assemblyman, who represents most of Mercer County, unveiled a legislative package today that would alter the dynamic in Trenton by toughening penalties on corruption, creating new classes of crime and -- most surprisingly -- making the Legislature a full-time body and imposing a 10-year term limit on legislators.

According to a press release from his office, Gusciora would:

• amend the state’s RICO statute to include "political crimes" among those defined as racketerring. The change would allow the state not only to recoup money lost to corruption but would give it the power to "collect up to three times any amount gained as a result of a corrupt enterprise," he said.
• make the creation of no-show jobs a crime.
• require legislators to certify in writing that they would not be benefitting financially -- whether directly or indirectly -- from the bills they introduce.
• give the Legislature power to suspend members who have been indicted.
  create a full-time legislature.
• and ” and impose “term limits.” Gusciora argues that the only way to avoid outside conflicts, whether public or private, would be to have a full-time legislative body.
• and impose term limits to "ensure that there is fresh blood in the system."

With the Gusciora proposals now on the table alongside some pretty tough rules being proposed by Gov. Chris Christie, there is a chance that the culture of corruption that has badly damaged the public's faith in state and local government can be overturned.

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Singing the same old song

The Republicans' new plan for the nation -- as described in their "Pledge to America" is not exactly a bold statement pledging a new direction. The plan, tax cuts and vague promises to cut government spending can be summed up succinctly: More of the same.

We've been down this road before. The notion that we can cut our way to prosperity is absurd. It hasn't worked in the past and it will not work moving forward. Consider recent history: The last three decades have been characterized by wild fluctuations in our economy, an upward shift in income, a growing underclass, failing infrastructure, a failing regulatory apparatus and so on. Libertarians and fiscal conservatives, such as the misleadingly named  Club for Growth, say that this proves that government does not work. The reality, of course, is that government can't work when you tied its hands behind its back.

Is the failure of our food-inspection regime due to government's built-in inefficiencies, as the fiscal hawks would say, or is it because we've reduced the number of food inspectors and asked industry to police itself? Did the financial collapse happen because of some inherent government failing, or was it because we gutted the rules and handed the keys to the financial cop car to the crooks? The same goes for the rest of the regulatory apparatus, which was gutted under Reagan and the two Bushes (Clinton did not exactly rebuild the system, but at least he didn't make it worse).The questions, I think, imply the answer.

And what about the growing inequality in the nation? Is this shift happening because the wealthy have been smarter and work harder? Or is it because we slashed taxes for the rich at the same time that we criminalized the poor and took away the handful of lifelines we had offered?

The Republicans are peddling a lie, trying to convince the American people that their plans will magically transform a nation in decline into a reborn superpower, when what they really are offering is further erosion and decay. (The Democrats are only nominally better on this, unwilling as they are to stand up to their corporate sponsors.)

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Dispatches: Inside, outside

Anti-Muslim bigotry is going mainstream. That's the topic of this week's column. Discuss.

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Optimism reigns before season begins

I am a Knicks fan, which is a lot like being a Mets fan when you get down to it. I am optimistic as the season approaches and then the results come in and the pain resumes. Alas.

In any case, stories like this one about Dano Galinari make me hopeful. (Though I wouldn't risk a dime to back it up.)

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The governor's priorities

Budgets are about priorities. They are more than just numbers.

Gov. Chris Christie knows that -- and is making clear his own priorities. From today's Star-Ledger editorial, which pretty much sums up what the governor views as important:

A few days after saying New Jersey is so broke it must cut medical benefits for retirees and freeze their pensions forever, Gov. Chris Christie now says he wants to cut income taxes for the rich.

Think about those priorities. Middle-class families just lost their property tax rebates. Schools lost nearly $1 billion in funding, their biggest hit ever. Thousands of working poor families were closed out of health care programs. And our colleges and universities were whacked hard, forcing tuition hikes as the state scholarship programs run dry.

The governor said those cuts were necessary because the state’s vaults were empty. He was the guy telling us to live within our means, to face hard realities. And now this — a tax cut that would blow a new hole in the budget.

I want readers of this blog to think about what he's proposing and ask yourselves why giving money back to the rich makes more sense than providing teachers -- or ensuring that the people who do the work that we need done get decent salaries and benefits.

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'Fear the underlying corporate power structure'

I fell behind on some of my political reading -- grading papers and doing other work -- but there is a quotation from Chris Hedges' Truthdig column last week worth passing along:

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

A scary thought, to be sure. I want to add, by the way, that I agree for the most part -- we face a daunting situation. Our elections have lost their democratic luster and become little more than entertainment side shows. Little changes aside from the faces.

(I disagree with Mr. Hedges in his complete abandonment of the system. Like him, I believe we need a third party and have voted for the Greens and other at the national and state level numerous times in the past. There is a danger when doing so, however, of creating an environment in which the worst can come to power. There was a difference between Obama and McCain in 2008, though not as great a difference as we pretend. It is a rhetorical one, to be sure, but at least Obama talks about some of the issues I care about as a populist lefty.)

The election of Barack Obama did not and could not bring change -- nor did I expect it to -- any more than Al Gore would have given us a better America than George W. Bush. The Bush years were not an aberration and the difference between Bush and Gore was just a matter of degree.

The Iraq War may not have occurred under Gore, but all other things being equal, Afghanistan would have -- and it was a series of ill-fated procorporate reforms passed by the Clinton-Gore administration that gave us the financial meltdown from which we continue to dig out.

Hedges' dismissal of electoral politics notwithstanding, he is correct when he advocates for a radical break with the formal structures of American society," by which he means corporate-fueled growth and corporate-controlled media and food production.

We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get.

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GOP says: Don't ask, don't tell, don't repeal

This, like the issue of same-sex marriage, is about citizenship -- or it should be. Gays are being denied the right to be full partners in the nation's civic life because they have to lie if they want to serve in the military. So much for the Declaration of Independence.

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Listen to the Lady

Yes, I like her music, but I like her willingness to put her record sales on the line by making a public stand on gay rights. Bravo.

Of course, LG Granderson is right -- Ga Ga's stand likely will mean nothing because supporters of repeal of DADT (and expansion of other gay rights) in the Senate have not been willing to make their voice heard as loudly.

This has, in the end, given so-called moderates like Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown -- along with conservative Democrats like Jim Webb -- an out (pun intended).

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Using procedure to oppose procedure: Don't ask, don't tell, don't vote?

I just want to understand this: Susan Collins plans to vote against sending the Defense Authorization bill -- and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell -- to the full Senate because she dislikes the procedural manuevering by Democrats. I'd be more inclined to agree with her criticism were she not as guilty as anyone in the Senate of using procedural manuevers to get what she wants.

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Endless revision: An interview with Philip Schultz

Here is my story on Philip Schultz, in advance of the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival on Friday.

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Politics over sound policy

The Star-Ledger makes it clear that yesterday's vote on women's health funding was purely political -- which shouldn't surprise anyone who has been following the escapades in Trenton.

Gov. Chris Christie has portrayed himself as a tough budget sheriff, but it is clear if you look at the spending decisions in his budget that ideology is a determining factor behind nearly every dollar included or excluded from the budget.

That includes pension reform and his assault on public education, his decision to cut family-planning funding and more things than I can list.

Christie is no more a straight-shooter than Jon Corzine. He's just ballsier.

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Ledger touts conservative study: Credentials matter as much as affiliation

The breathless reporting of studies like these drive me crazy. It's not the conclusion that I question -- there is no doubt that people are leaving New Jersey -- but the motivation behind these studies and the failure of major news organizations to call the groups that author them what they are.

Let's put the facts on the table: The Tax Foundation may be nonpartisan, as it claims, but it is not nonideological. Just one look at its board of directors -- high-level corporate officers, former members of or advisors to the Bush administration and the McCain campaign and a former Republican Congressman -- and you can see the genesis of my concern.

As I said, the results may be spot on, but the characterization of the organization pushing the study is misleading. Imagine if the Economic Policy Institute or the Center for Economic Policy Research were described only as nonpartisan research groups -- which they are. What would conservatives do?

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Billboards or buses?

Really, is there any place we won't put an advertisement?

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DISPATCHES: Rail tunnel needs a long breather

I'm as supportive of public transportation as the next guy, but projects still need to make sense -- and right now, the Access to the Region's Core project has too many problems to continue moving it forward.

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Muddy waters

Upset victories in Republican primaries in Delaware and New Hampshire have further muddied the waters in this year's election, taking two states listed by Real Clear Politics as "Lean Republican" and likely moving them into the "Toss-up" column.

In Delaware, Democrat Chris Coons has an 11-point lead in the most recent poll over Tea Party favorite Chritine O'Donnell, who knocked off Republican Mike Castle, who was expected to win by a large vote total come November.

In New Hampshire, early returns have Ovide Lamontagne beating Kelly Avotte -- which, if it holds, gives the Democrats a shot at stealing a Republican-held seat, based on polling from earlier this summer.

This is just speculation, of course. But it does present us with an interesting election season to follow.

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Don't count GOP -- or Democratic -- seats just yet

The electorate is a lot more unpredictable than the national story line is letting on. The common narrative is that the Democrats get smacked and possibly lose both houses of Congress. I have my doubts, mostly because the narrative is based on 1994 and some questionable polling. Democrats will lose seats -- most likely a lot, but we have to acknowledge that the wild cards are having their impact in states that six or eight months ago were considered GOP locks: Sharron Angle winning the GOP primary may have saved Harry Reid's job, for instance, and the Tea Party win in Alaska could flip a long-held GOP set.

And then there is Delaware, which was expected to go to popular Republican Congressman Mike Castle, but which now is a crapshoot because of a hard rightwing challenge that could sink the GOP and keep the seat in the Democratic column.

Here is the latest polling.

This isn't meant to say that the Democats will win any of these seats; rather, the point I am making is that this is a volatile election season and anything could happen.

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• 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.

Rambling notes on Islam, America and cultural synthesis

This MSNBC story implies an interesting question: Are we pushing American Muslims toward the very behaviors that we accuse them of engaging in?

The gist here is that Muslims are starting to ask what it will take to be accepted as full partners in the American project. How much effort must be expended by a religious, cultural or ethnic minority for that acceptance to be had?

The answer is complicated and a bit disheartening. The process of Americanization takes time -- too much time, unfortunately -- and it is a two-way street. Minority/immigrant groups identify the best parts of their heritage and incorporate them into their new identities, while taking on the best and worst of America's cultural identity. At the same time, the larger society must make its own transition, which is where problems arise. The society as a whole resists these new elements, push them to the margins. Over time, hopefully, this changes and the outsiders are brought inside, or at least are no longer looked upon with suspicion.

At the same time minorities of all stripes tend to remain outsiders to some degree forever. My Jewishness no longer prevents my participation in the larger society, for instance, but it does create some degree of separation in some people's minds. There remains a far more significant portion of the population than we would like to admit who carries with them the harsh stereotype of the Jew as cheap or obnoxious or what have you.

You can hear it when people speak in what they believe are closed settings. Sometimes you'll hear someone use the phrase "jewing him down" or make some other ugly remark. Or, and this maybe more common, you will hear someone praise a member of a minority group for being unlike the stereotype -- I was told, once, that I was a "good Jew" (meaning I'm not cheap or bossy or something like that, I guess). Joe Biden, during the 2008 campaign, remarked that Obama was the first black candidate to be a legitimate candidate, because he was eloquent and clean-cut. The implication was that most blacks are otherwise, a kind of soft racism that continues to plague this country.

It is ugly, but not overt -- though, it carries with it the potential for a fuller, nastier racism -- which we have been seeing directed at the president since it became clear he would be the nominee. (Not all critics of the president are racist, as I've discussed with my students, but there are criticsw who are racist and it would be naive to think otherwise.)

For Muslims -- and many in the Asian community -- the racism remains overt and dangerous and the "good Muslim" trope has yet to become common. It is evident in the controversy over the Islamic cultural center proposed for downtown New York (Muslims, as a group, can only honor 9/11 by staying as far away from the site as possible), in the attacks on mosques around the country and the easy way in which some take the actions of a small handful of Muslims and make those actions stand for an entire world community.

Islam is no different than any of the other major religions in its diversity or its insistence that it is the only path to truth. It is no more dangerous than Christianity, for instance, which has its own warrior history (the Crusades) and a dangerous subset of militant groups that attack abortion providers and have recast Jesus as a warrior king).

Does anyone think that the "Christian nation" nonsense pushed not just by the extreme right but by mainstream conservatives is benign? Having been at the butt-end of prejudice and bigotry as a Jew, I can tell you that you're fooling yourself if you believe that.

Marginalizing and demonizing American Muslims is morally and ethically wrong -- and also foolish. Sartre, in his biographical sketch of the French novelist and playwright Jean Genet explained Genet's criminality by saying that he lived out the lifeplan others had written for him; Genet became a criminal because it was the path created for him and one of the few options he was given.

Are we doing the same to American Muslims?

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On the side of religious freedom

President Obama offers a powerful quotation that we all need to take to heart:

“This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights,” Mr. Obama said. “And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

There is no excuse for the violence breaking out in Muslim countries over the bigoted Koran-burning threat. Resorting to violence as a response to a slight or an insult. And there is no excuse for the blanket-blame thrown over all Muslims by critics of the downtown mosque and others.

The president, in this speech today, reaffirmed the nation's commitment to religious freedom and diversity.

Bravo., Mr. President.

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Critical thinking: A seminar in the comment section of the South Brunswick Post

It is rare that a lucid and well-structured debate happens in the comment section of any online story, let alone one as hard-edged as Keith Rasmussen's over-the-top attack on Islam.

Mr. Rasmussen, who I have known for years, is a strong writer with a taste for hyperbole and has a talent for using words as figurative daggers.

His column, which we ran last week, was obviously an unacknowledged response to one I had written a week earlier, and it featured many of the attributes I mention above.

But, and this is key to me, it also offered a powerful example of argument gone awry. It was awash in the kind of logical fallacies that I try to teach my students to avoid. I offered a critique of some of the column in a post last week.

What I want to do now is direct readers to the comment section, in which Mr. Rasmussion and someone calling him/herself Zapped go at it. Zapped is pointed and calls Mr. Rasmussen out for his (deliberately?) faulty logic, for the straw men he props up to knock over and the way he elides the difference between the individual and the group so that he can argue that it was Islam that was responsible for 9/11 and not a small band of radical extremists.

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Military media matters: Tom Dispatch explains

We live in a militarized society, which is nowhere more evident than in the way our media has been colonized by hawks. Tom Dispatch's Tom Englehardt writes about it this week in a must-read (and you can hear him talk about it on the Tom Dispatch podcast). He explains it far better than I can.

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Poets on a Wednesday night

It was a wonderful evening of poetry last night in Woodbridge, where I read as part of the long-running PoetsWednesday series.

Paul Sohar was my fellow feature -- the second time we shared a bill -- and he was funny, philosophical, wonderfully absurd and a perfect counterpart to my dark, concrete and politically focused poetry. I suggest everyone check his work out.

The open reading offered some good work, as well, including a performance of "Rock Candy Mountain" by Mark Brunetti. Brunetti will be featured Sunday along with Barbara Crooker at the River Read poetry series at the Dublin House in Red Bank at 2.

Thanks to Deb LaVeglia for her efforts -- and her amazing antiwar poem. Keep up the good work.

***

The poetry series at the South Brunswick Library will return Sept. 19 with the Cool Women. The reading starts at 2 p.m. and is followed by an open reading. Susanna Rich and Carole Stone are on tap for Oct. 17.

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• 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.

Come see me read tonight

This post is just another in my recent string of self-promotional blurbs: I'm reading tonight with Paul Sohar at the Barron Art Center in Woodbridge at 8 p.m. as part of the long-running PoetsWednesday series. Joe Weil is doing a workshop before hand at 7.

Come out and enjoy the poems.

• Send me an e-mail.
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• 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.

Dispatches: Showdown at the reform corral?

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not always criticizing the governor. Read this week's Dispatches to see what I mean.

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• 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 on Park51 and intolerance toward Muslims

I called some of the opponents of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque bigots in the headline to a column I wrote last week. I stand by my characterization and ask that they explain how the singling out of Muslims is anything but ugly religious bias. This column, which ran in the South Brunswick Post today by a longtime resident and friend, only underscores my point.

Note, by the way, how Mr. Rasmussen elides four of the five elements of the First Amendment, making it about speech and speech along and ignoring the religious establishment clause -- which is the first one listed in the Amendment. No one is saying Park51 opponents can't speak or that they cannot say bigoted and ugly things. They can. But when they do, they should expect to be called out on it.

On a side note, I keep hearing about debris from one of the hijacked planes hitting the building proposed for the Park51 but the only documentation anyone has provided has been something on Wikipedia. Wikipedia? Really? I tell my students and my reporters that Wikipedia is not a reliable source -- it is open source and much of it has not been vetted. In any case, I still can't figure out what that has to do with anything.

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• 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.

So much for property tax reform

Chris Christie ran for governor on the promise that he would cut property taxes. Instead, the average New Jersey taxpayer will be paying more out of pocket for local government and schools.

From The Asbury Park Press:

The average property tax hike in New Jersey will be 3.3 percent this year — and will hit 23.5 percent after the loss of the homestead rebate is factored in, a statewide review of new tax rates show.

Property taxes increased 3.7 percent in 2009, only nominally more than what has happened so far this year. But, as the story points out, taxpayers had rebates to help them deal with the pain. No such luck this year, though the governor says he will offer a revamped rebate program for next year -- a manuever that promises to be difficult.

The rebate program was a victim of this year's budget balancing act, so his promise raises the question of how he'll pay for the rebates in the 2011 budget. What programs can we expect to be slashed? Colleges and public schools already are paying the price and the public workforce has been gutted, with the expected increase in unemployment. So, dear governor, what is your plan?

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Dispatches: A simple fix for Social Security

My Dispatches column is about fixing Social Security -- which hit around the same time as a similar column I wrote for The Progressive Populist addressing the myths and calling for SS's expansion.

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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.