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.

Keep pressing for marriage equality

Monmouth University released poll results today that show narrow support in New Jersey for same-sex marriage, though support remained under a 50 percent threshold. (The poll results arrived in an e-mail after our editorial and podcast were live on our site.)

The poll — which Patrick Murray, founding director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, links to in his blog — found that 48 percent of New Jerseyans backed same-sex marriage while 43 percent opposed, with support inching up when only registered voters are included.

Currently, New Jersey residents who favor allowing same-sex marriage outnumber those who oppose it by a 48% to 43% margin. Opinion among registered voters is slightly more supportive of same-sex marriage – 50% of voters favor it to 40% who are opposed.

Opinion on this issue breaks down along party lines: most Democrats support same-sex marriage (58% favor to 35% oppose), most Republicans are against it (37% favor to 54% oppose), and independents are split (46% favor to 43% oppose).

New Jersey polls conducted by Eagleton-Rutgers both before and after the state’s civil union law went into effect found similar levels of overall support among the general public – 50% to 44% in June 2006 and 48% to 45% in October 2007. However, all these polls mark a significant change from September 2003, when only 43% favored allowing same-sex marriage compared to 50% who opposed it. Prior polls have also shown strong (65%) support for the state’s current civil union laws.

Particularly interesting, given the results of November’s referendum in California, is that half of the respondents

oppose amending the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a women. Another 41% favor a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Among registered voters, 52% oppose such an amendment while only 38% support it.

This marks a decrease in support for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage from October 2007 when more residents supported (47%) than opposed (44%) it. It is a return to June 2006 levels when just 40% were in favor and 52% were opposed.

So, there has been movement in the right direction, even if it has not been at the pace same-sex-marriage supporters would like. That doesn’t mean supporters shouldn’t press the issue. Remember, there was little public or political momentum for civil rights before the Montgomery boycott and the civil rights movement forced the nation to deal with the injustice of Jim Crow and the lingering legacy of slavery.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Editorial: Union label not enough for true equality

This week’s editorial is on today’s second anniverary of the state’s civil union law. The gist is that it is a failure and it is time to fix it by legalizing same-sex marriage. A podcast, by Geoffrey Wertime, accompanies it. (You also can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes by clicking here.)

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Help for homeowners

The single most effective way of taking control of the housing market and stemming its precipitous slide is to prop up homeowners and prevent them from going into foreclosure.

The logic is simple: Each house that goes into foreclosure has a ripple effect, its diminished value echoing into the surrounding neighborhood, driving down other home prices and creating momentum for a foreclosure epidemic. As property values fall, there is the growing likelihood that many houses will be worth less than the mortgage paper their owners are carrying, which in turn might encourage some to walk away and leave their properties for the bank to deal with.

There are neighborhoods around the nation that have been destroyed by this dynamic and it is imperative that we find a way to stop this in its tracks.

President Barack Obama today unveiled a plan that he says will do that — offering assistance to up to 9 million homeowners in an effort he says “would shore up distressed housing prices, stabilize neighborhoods and slow a downward spiral that he said was ‘unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself.’”

The plan has three basic components. One would help homeowners who continue to make loan payments on time, but are paying high interest rates and would otherwise not be able to refinance because they do not have enough equity or their houses are worth less than they borrowed. A second would assist people who are at risk of foreclosure by providing incentives to lenders to alter the terms of loans to make them substantially more affordable to struggling homeowners. The third would try to assure there is plenty of credit available for mortgages by giving $200 billion of additional financial backing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies.

Acorn’s Bertha Lewis, writing on OpenLeft, praised the president, saying his anti-foreclosure plan likely would have a greater impact on the economy than even the stimulus plan would have. The $75 billion plan “is a welcome initiative,” she writes, “especially in the wake of the 2 years of inactivity and neglect from the Bush Administration.”

I would argue that in terms of addressing the specific genesis of our present crisis – the toxic assets crippling the financial sector – the announcement today is of greater magnitude. For without a plan to address the predicted 8-9 million foreclosures over the next 4 years, that’s in addition to the 2.3 million that occurred in 2008 with a total estimated cost to the economy of over $850 billion, attempts to spur an economic recovery will fail. There can be no long-term solution without addressing the immediate foreclosure crisis.

That’s the key thing to understand. We have to help homeowners if we are to have any shot at stabilizing the housing market and easing the credit crunch. If housing values continue to fall, this can only continue to get worse.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.