All of us need to be activists

I think Alfred Doblin hits this on the head today in The Record in calling out the Democrats for their inaction — both in New Jersey and nationally — on marriage equality. Consider: same-sex marriage is legal in three states — California, Connecticut and Massachussets — but only because the courts in those states got fed up with the political gamesmanship and said equality means equality. (The New Jersey court essentially agreed with the others, but punted when it came time to call it marriage, allowing the Legislature to weasel out.)

The Republicans, of course, are open about their homophobia. Most — there are exceptions, like state Sen. Bill Baroni — have jumped on the “mand and a woman” bandwagon, and turned their guns on activist judges and activist courts. Doblin rightly condemns these assaults, but reminds us that while the GOP has played to its red meat constituency, the Democrats have actually remained rather silent.

Democrats are so good at courting the gay vote that they manage to convince gays and lesbians that they will get a better deal with them. Not really so. Democrats have done little to change federal laws and policies that prohibit homosexuals from serving in the military or receiving the same federal benefits that married couples enjoy. It was a Democrat who created “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Democrats control our state Legislature and when given the choice between civil unions and marriage, they didn’t say “I do.”

As with so many issues, however, we’ve ceded our willingness to fight on behalf of what’s right to politicians, who by their very nature are incapable of placing the larger good above their own political interests. That’s why we need to agitate and protest and generally be big and noisy and visible. That goes for fighting for marriage equality, an end to the war in Iraq, a more populist and progressive economic stimulus, green jobs.

This could involve voting for a third-party candidate, though that is likely to create some dangerous side effects (witness the last eight years). Or it could involve just getting of our couches and making our voices heard. As Doblin writes:

A hate-driven constitutional amendment may pass through a Congress that is pandering to a constituency of hate-filled voters, but it cannot become law without a majority of Americans agreeing with the hate. Disenfranchised Americans only become part of the franchise when they take control themselves.

Americans may be disgusted with eight years of Bush, but there have been no massive protests across the nation, no loud cry from tens of thousands of citizens for impeachment or even an end to the war in Iraq during those eight years. Palin, who went from mayor of Wasilla to governor to vice-presidential nominee, doesn’t lack for gumption. The same cannot be said of most Americans.

There are “activist courts” because an inactive citizenry allows injustice to continue. Blaming Connecticut won’t change that.

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Rising costs, stagnant salaries

The Star-Ledger reports today that health care premiums in New Jersey are growing faster than wages. I doubt anyone is surprised.

What is surprising, however, is that no one quoted in the story mentions real health care reform, instead focusing on reigning in costs as if doing so in a vacuum will have any real impact.

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What do Alan Greenspan and the Easter Bunny have in common?

I thought that Alan Greenspan was infallible. Wasn’t that the conventional wisdom all these years? For most of the political and journalistic power elite, this is the equivalent of finding out there is no Santa Claus.

on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Shocked like Capt. Renault, perhaps? I mean, shouldn’t someone with Greenspan’s credentials have known better than to trust the pyramid scheme that the finance industry created.

At least he is now agreeing that “the multitrillion-dollar market for credit default swaps, instruments originally created to insure bond investors against the risk of default, needed to be restrained.”

“This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades,” he said. “The
whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.”

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Paying for police– and government in general

I’m not sure how I feel about this decision, which nullified a state plan to required the 89 rural communities without police departments to pay the state for State Police coverage.

The plan, which would have cost the towns $12.6 million (a sliver of the $87 million the state says it costs to police those towns), was part of a larger effort by the state to make smaller communities understand the actual costs of continuing to function as independent municipalities. The state’s argument has been that state law enforcement has allowed these towns to receive police protection without having to pay for it — unlike towns with their own forces or those that may have contracts with neighboring communities.

The cost to the state is relatively minor, but the new cost in small towns would have meant higher property tax bills.

The problem, as I see it, is not the governor’s plan — which seems fair when you consider that residents of Rocky Hill, for instance, pay for State Police services out of their state income tax, the same as I do, but they get to use state cops as their primary law enforcement option. I have to pay additional money for local police.

At the same time, we all rely on the State Police for a lot of things, and these small towns have been operating in this way for years and years — so this is not the easiest of issues to resolve.

The issue raises some basic questions about the vast number of towns in this state and whether we should be pushing them or forcing them to band together as larger communities so that services can be provided and provided using an economy of scale.

The questions of police protection, of library spending (i.e., Jamesburg), recreation programs, school funding, etc., have to be addressed within a broader context. We can’t keep dealing with each of them in a vacuum.

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