With dozens of hours to go to the conclusion of the New Jersey elections, Governor Phil Murphy appears to be breaking the limit on a term that has haunted his Democratic predecessors since the early 1980s. This may be great news for the Jersey Democrats, but it needs to be tempered by the recent NBC poll that President Biden’s presidency is flooded and a majority of Americans now disapprove of his job performance.
The poll also shows that 7 in 10 adults, including nearly half of Democrats, think the nation is going in the wrong direction, and nearly 60 percent think Biden’s leadership of the economy is negative just nine months after his presidency . “NBC reported.
On a planet in the midst of a pandemic and climate crisis, we cannot afford to be short-sighted about what is politically important. What is the use of Murphy being re-elected if at the same time his national party is nipping down and losing control of Congress on the way down?
Much of the COVID recovery Murphy took after our state recorded the highest per capita Covid death rate in the world was due to the billion dollar infusion from Washington, initiated by the White House of Biden and passed by a Democrat controlled Congress.
The erosion of Biden’s support even among his own party can easily be traced back to the obstructionism of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Krysten Sinema (D-Az) who previously shared the 78-year-old president’s Build Back Better agenda with the Kneels covered the details of which could be presented to the American people.
Biden’s bold $ 3.7 trillion potentially transformative agenda was the victim of a job on the ring road within the Democratic Party. While coverage was fixated on personalities and dollar amounts, few Americans really knew what the Build Back Better agenda was all about, even as pharmaceutical, Wall Street, and energy company lobbyists worked to derail it
Among the widely reported details now is the long list of what the Democrats had to remove: paid family leave; medical leave; free adult education center; Teeth and eyesight; and a plan to cut prescription drug prices – all to please two “moderates” who could support a heavily discounted $ 1.7 trillion package.
Saying that the professional Democrats screwed up the message about it doesn’t fully describe the political misconduct. Now the story is about what the Democrats did NOT deliver. No wonder the tide of public support for Biden is ebbing.
“Democrats need to talk to people’s everyday needs,” said Larry Hamm, longtime Newark ward
Hamm
Organizer and former US Senate candidate. “When you hear the conversation about reconciliation and Build Back Better, you hear the numbers, not the programs like childcare or the extended child allowance.”
Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, said he saw the line between progressives and so-called moderates between “the people who want the working class to have more” and “those who want them to get less – that would be” your moderates . “
On October 27th, thousands of poor and low-income Americans, along with their advocates, came to Washington, DC, from across the country as part of a national organizing effort led by Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Campaign of the Poor to Press Congress to keep Biden’s original Build Back Better agenda from shrinking.
“The focus is only on the numbers – so many trillions,” said Imam Saffet Abid Catovic, the Muslim Chaplin of Drew University in Madison, who made the trip in support of the Campaign for the Poor. “The focus is not on people like the essential workers who are now disposable. It is a sad comment on how our democracy works that the whole process is being held up by two senators. I thought it was ‘we the people’ but we are being held hostage by these two senators. “
Much remains for Murphy and New Jersey to do, as the lead pipe crisis prior to the Newark pandemic revealed. Losing momentum in Washington will have real ramifications here in New Jersey. Generations of neglect of our basic infrastructure have taken a toll that the finances of any single state cannot repair.
The massive death toll from the pandemic and the varying effects on people of color, often on the front lines as important workers, have exposed major gaps in our health and public health systems.
Think how many of the dozen people in our region who drowned in the Ida floods died in illegal basement dwellings. If you run a state like ours, which, according to the United Health Foundation, has more than one in five families with “severe housing problems,” you really need a willing partner in Washington if you want to tackle our chronic student housing crisis at the same time against our neighborhoods to harden the ravages of climate change.
According to the United Health Foundation’s health rankings, 21 percent of our state’s residential units have one or more of the following problems: a lack of a full kitchen; the necessary pipelines are missing; are overcrowded and / or represent a “heavy” cost burden for the families living there. At the national level, only 17.5 percent of the country’s housing stock is similarly at risk.
Build Back Better has to be more than a slogan – it has to be an imperative.
As Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently visited the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick to promote Murphy, our governor has successfully joined the progressive wing of his party.
In a glowing profile across the nation, columnist John Nichols posited that Murphy might be “the most progressive” governor of the United States, noting that “many who were once skeptical of the former investment banker are now admitting the governor’s policies of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, was compassionate ”. and future-oriented thinking. “
There is a tab on Governor Murphy’s campaign website that cites affordable housing as a problem, but as “strengthening New Jersey’s position as the best place in America to raise a family,” without reference to the so sad state of affairs many of its existing facilities housing stock where people are paying far too much for far too little.
“When COVID-19 made it difficult for thousands of residents to pay their rent or mortgage, Phil acted decisively and signed a comprehensive order preventing eviction or foreclosure of people from their homes,” the Murphy website said.
What escapes this narrative is that BEFORE the pandemic, according to United Way’s annual ALICE (Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed) survey, nearly 40 percent of New Jersey households have had trouble making ends meet and getting their rent or mortgage on To keep up to date. In some of the poorer communities in the state, the majority of households found themselves in such a melting pot from month to month.
For years, long before COVID, New Jersey has been one of the states with the highest rate of foreclosures, and more than a decade after the Great Recession, thousands of zombie homes continue to weigh on local property values and pose a clear and present threat to neighborhoods Places like Camden and Newark.
In 2018, NJ Advance Media reported that New Jersey had 391,428 vacant housing units with the highest concentration in Newark, according to the US Census.
“They are empty, they are often dilapidated and put a strain on your wallet,” wrote Disha Raychadhuri of NJ Advance Media. “Empty lots can adversely affect economic growth in an area by causing decay, discouraging investment, and detracting from the overall feel of a neighborhood. Not to mention that they can be a real thorn in the side of your home equity. “
For Fredrica Bey, a Newark-based community activist, Governor Murphy and his administration were unable to usefully address the state’s ongoing foreclosure crisis that predated the pandemic. As a consequence, she says she will not choose him, but she will choose.
“The governor who comes from Wall Street has not held banks like Wells Fargo accountable for undermining black home ownership and decimating our” historic black wealth for our children and families in our neighborhoods, “she said. “I will do it on behalf of our beloved Maya Angelo, who told us, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Or I write on behalf of our beloved, Fannie Lou Hamer, as ‘We are sick and tired of being sick and tired!’
She continued. “For ‘me and my house’, we in Trenton will vote for people who will continue to show respect for our lives and property, like our Congregation member Cleopatra Tucker, who fights with us and understands what we chose of our need Leader when it comes to asserting yourself against the big banks and Wall Street. “
(Visited 344 times, 8 visits today)
Comments are closed.