Author: hankkalet

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Finally. After several years of trying to straddle the issue, endorsing equality but only within a separate status for gays and lesbians, President Obama has finally gotten on the right side of history.

In a sit-down interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama completed what has been a markedly long and oft-mocked evolution on the matter.
“I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview that will air in full on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” he said.

Again, what took him so long? The answer, of course, is politics. Obama viewed his support for equality — which he expressed as support for same-sex marriage way back in the 1990s when he represented an overwhelmingly liberal state district in Illinois — as incompatible with his ability to win and maintain the highest office in the land. So his position evolved, much the same way we have watched the moderate Mitt Romney evolve.

Luckily, Obama’s ultimate evolution led him in the right direction, ending with an endorsement of same-sex marriage, making him the only sitting president to come out in favor of marriage equality.

History will remember him for that.

***

On a side note, Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s legal correspondent,  offered what may be the best line on the announcement. Writing on her Facebook page, Lithwick said,

ok it’s been 90 minutes and my marriage still feels pretty solid. anyone else????

Mine seems pretty solid, too.

• 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.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressives have Bank of America in its sights. Activists are protesting at the bank’s shareholder meeting in North Carolina — and at branches around the country.

Among the protest sites are the BofA branches in Princeton (at the corner of Nassau and Witherspoon streets at noon) and New Brunswick (45 Easton Ave.).

The Huffington Post describes a multifaceted protest that includes moves by “disgruntled shareholders — including Trillium Asset Management, the City of New York and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees” to

force votes on proposals that would curb the bank’s political spending and force it to review its foreclosure practices. Foreclosure victims are hoping to give testimony during the meeting.

And marches and demonstrations outside bank branches designed “to draw attention to Bank of America’s relationship with the federal government, the coal industry and its long record of foreclosure abuse.”

I should have more later as things develop.

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Here is some Huffington Post video:

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Word is that the protest in New Brunswick is lightly attended — three protesters outside the Easton Avenue branch. I am waiting for an update and will pass it along, but it does look like a dud.

• 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.

It is quiet this morning. The dogs are asleep — Rosie in her crate with the door open, Sophie in the hallway by the kitchen. I have a gate blocking off the office where I’m working and where the crates are located.

It seems odd to me to keep the two of them separated. They are sisters, puppies from the same litter, and they’ve spent nearly their entire lives together. But, for now, we have little choice.

What we’ve learned in the three-plus years that we’ve had Rosie and Sophie is that owning two females, especially two from the same litter, is a bad idea. It presents a constant struggle as they both strive for dominance and attention. There have been fights — some pretty nasty — and while we have kept it under control as best we can, it appears that there is little we can do to ensure that they won’t go at each other. We’ve done everything our trainer has said: removed toys from the equation; started using the crates again; exercised them as often as we can. We are vigilant (with some unfortunate goof ups on our part) and, yet, the possibility of a fight continues to hang over our heads.

Last night, we were watching television. We were giving the dogs access to their beds — which we had taken away a while back — and Rosie was in one of them. Sophie seemed afraid to pass her and tried to go around the couch, was in a tight spot under a table when Rosie pounced. She made it across the room in a second and we were lucky to pull them apart just as it began. But it was terrifying and we had to keep them separated the rest of the night and now feel like we have to keep them separated and only give them access to each other sporadically.

Pat, our trainer, told us to keep Rosie on lockdown and that is the plan. But it appears that we have a difficult and painful decision ahead. Have we reached a point where we need to break up the Rosie & Sophie Show permanently? How could we live with that decision and, yet, how can we go on living this way?

• 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.

Gov. Chris Christie has not been a champion of the state’s existing affordable housing regime. The governor has moved to disband the state Council on Affordable Housing, planning to hand the council’s responsibilities to the state Department of Community Affairs, allow towns more freedom to develop their own plans and, bizarrely, to take the nearly quarter of a billion dollars in housing trust fund money to balance his budget.

So housing advocates can be forgiven for being cautious in their response to his comments yesterday.

The proposal, outlined today by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, would change the way the state administers its annual $18 million federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a subsidy meant to encourage development of affordable rentals.

“My administration is committed to expanding housing options for our most vulnerable citizens as part of our long-term, comprehensive plan to combat homelessness,” Christie said in a statement.

The agency did not release the language of the proposal, but said it would cap the cost of projects eligible for the credit, and limit construction of affordable housing in high poverty areas.

It would also award developers for building houses or apartments for families who are now homeless. Also under the plan, 40 percent of the tax credit awards would be granted in urban areas “to guarantee urban project development.”

The big news, however, is the governor’s stated intention to use the new rules to “give poor residents a better chance to live in towns with high performing schools.”

According to a press release from the Department of Community Affairs,

The rule also proposes incentives to locate developments proximate to areas of high job growth and excellent schools.

“The changes will create opportunities for children to flourish in high achieving schools while greatly expanding parents’ ability to find employment proximate to their residence” explained Acting DCA Commissioner Richard E. Constable, III, who is Chair of the HMFA Board and Co-chair of the Interagency Council on Homelessness.

If the new rules produce housing — which is desperately needed — and ensures that the housing is spread fairly throughout the state, as the governor says, then kudos to him and his administration. But given the history of affordable housing in the state — i.e., political unwillingness to allow construction of low-income and even moderate-income housing in many towns through the use of exclusionary zoning — I’m not particularly optimistic.

Cross-published from The Tent City Project.

• 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.

An IMF study reported on by The Huffington Post today should give all of us pause. Americans are buried in debt and, because of it, may be just one step away from financial catastrohe.

Today, Americans owe some $704 billion in credit card debt, and more than that in both auto loans and student borrowing.

Many Americans may not even realize the extent to which debt underpins their lifestyle. A number of analysts argue that many Americans who consider themselves middle class are in fact leading a precarious, over-leveraged existence, with few savings and little financial cushion in case of emergency.

Think about it. Most of us are just one health emergency — cancer, a heart attack, some disabling injury, a lost job, a fire, etc. — away from losing everything and ending up on a relative’s couch, or in a tent in the woods.

Cross-published from The Tent City Project.

• 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.