I did three miles this morning, the second time this week I did three. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. So, we go from there and see what happens, the goal being a half marathon in the spring.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
First shot on Wall Street’s bow
This is not a perfect bill, but it is the kind of legislation that could push us toward a more democratic central bank. What I find intriguing is the way the Republicans have signed on to legislation they never would have endorsed — have never endorsed in the 20-some-odd years that Ron Paul has been proposing it — mostly because Barack Obama’s financial team is opposed.
Now, being on the opposite side from Larry Summers and Tim Geithner is not necessarily a bad thing, but you know that their motivation has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with politics.
In any case, why stop with an audit. Let’s take it a step — or many steps — farther. Let’s smash the current arrangement and craft a new one that will be responsive to the American people rather than the banks.
William Greider, in The Nation, offers a list of prescriptions that have merit, legislation on the table in both houses that could become law if enough lawmakers are willing to break with the banks and do their jobs. They include:
- Sen. Chris Dodd’s proposal to “strip the Fed of its regulatory functions because of its ‘abysmal failure’ to protect the public, and to replace it with an overarching regulatory administration.”
- Sen. Richard Shelby’s interest in “eliminat(ing) bankers’ insider influence over regulation at the Fed.”
- Several plans to tax Wall Street — including an excise tax on financial transactions to pay for the bailout, proposed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.).
- Breaking up the big banks so they no longer will be “too big to fail.”
So, whatever happens to the Paul plan, let’s hope it is the first step toward real reform of our distorted financial system.
A growing shift toward same-sex marriage
Polls are notoriously fickle and unreliable, the results often depending on what a respond thinks his or her questioner wants to hear or how the questions themselves are framed.
But the poll released today by the Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics is another hopeful sign that New Jersey will do something too many states in the country have been unwilling to do: Give gays and lesbians full access to the rights the rest of us enjoy. According to the poll:
Supporters of gay marriage may find New Jersey more hospitable than many other states, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released today. By a 46 percent to 42 percent margin, adults in New Jerseyans favor legalizing same-sex nuptials, with 12 percent unsure.
The survey also shows that if the state Legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, 52 percent would accept the decision, while 40 percent would support a constitutional amendment banning the practice.
“Residents of New Jersey are more supportive of gay marriage than opposed to it, and more importantly a majority would accept a legislative decision legalizing same-sex marriages,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and professor of political science at Rutgers University. “While this tests opinion outside the intensity of a campaign to ban gay marriage as occurred in California, there is more of a ‘live and let live’ attitude in New Jersey than in many other states that have dealt with this issue.”
The key number, of course, is not the 46-42 support figure — that’s barely more than the margin of error and pegs support at less than 50 percent. Rather, the key is the 52 percent — a real majority — who say they would accept the state Legislature’s decision, were it to legalize same-sex marriage.
There is no way of knowing what will happen when same-sex marriage is legalized — and make no mistake, it will be legalized, most likely sometime next month — but I think it’s more likely we’ll follow the model of Massachusetts and not California.
Christie to attack the patchworks
Talking to municipal officials as the gubernatorial election wound down, I was struck by how many of them viewed Chris Christie as an ally in their attempts to beat back the tides of change. Forget the affordable housing issue, for a second, on which he does appear ready to make suburban mayors happy. It is on consolidation — or, to be more precise, in opposition to consolidation — that many mayors and others were looking with optimism toward the now-governor-elect.
Talk to officials from many of the region’s towns and you discover rather quickly that they think there is too much government, just not at the home office. So, they look to the state for cash, but refuse to do what is necessary to streamline the state’s confusing web of government entities.
Corzine, in a small way, put the issue on the table; Christie avoided it, but sent signals that he was with the towns.
And now the former U.S. Attorney is the governor-elect, we have a better handle on where he stands on what may be the most important issue he could face. During a speech at the state League of Municipalities today,
Christie delivered a forceful speech in which he said he would use “every tool at my disposal to force change.”
“The people of the state of New Jersey will no longer stand for us asking, ‘What’s in it for me,'” he said at the luncheon at the annual League of Municipalities convention. “I believe the message from this last election, the message to me and to (Lt. Gov-elect) Kim Guadagno, is we have to start asking what’s in it for us. And what is in it for us is a period of continued pain, continued difficulty and continued challenge.”
The state has become a “patchwork of ‘what’s in it for me'” over the years, Christie said. “That attitude is no longer acceptable to the people of this state,” he said in a warning tone.
Though he never said the words “shared services” or “consolidation,” that’s the message the municipal leaders in the room said they heard.
“We’re talking about possible layoffs and consolidations that we’d prefer not to do,” said Ellen Dickson, president of Summit Common Council. “It’s going to be very painful but we have to do it or else the state will be unlivable.”
Are we looking at something analagous to Bill Clinton and welfare reform, or Ronald Reagan and nuclear weapons? A Republican president never could have pushed through the draconian reforms enacted by Clinton. It also is likely that a more dovish president than Reagan would have had difficulty selling anti-nuke efforts that Reagan pushed through.
In this case, Christie is perceived as a friend of the suburbs, unlike Corzine, so he might not stir up the kind of almost paranoid opposition to consolidation we’ve been hearing for a while. Let’s see where this goes.
DeFazio is right
The Obama administration should never have turned to these guys for economic advice, and their record since January has only proven this. The president should listen to Peter DeFazio and replace them.
There are plenty of options, of course, including progressive economists like James K. Galbraith, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, who could refocus not only the Obama administration away from Wall Street but help create a new path for the economy as a whole.
