The NJEDA's Construction Inflation Fund can close funding gaps and help get real estate projects finished.
NJEDA grant can get real estate projects to the finish line
New Jersey tiene $450 para regalar a los inquilinos
Inquilinos que arrendaron apartamentos en New Jersey en 2019 puedan ser eligibles para recibir un pago de $450 del Estado de New Jersey y la solicitud es sumamente fácil para llenar.
New credit bureau policies on medical debt can benefit you
There are three new policy changes to medical debt recording that the major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – have pledged to uphold that can benefit consumers.
Rent assistance fund opens today July 28! ¡Asistencia para pagar su renta!
Are you a renter having trouble paying your housing costs — or a landlord trying to help tenants who arebehind in their rent? Billions of dollars in federal aid from the American Rescue Plan are finally available. On July 28 (today), local programs will begin to deliver assistance to help renters keep their homes.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has a Rental Assistance Finder to identify rental assistance in your area. At this page, you can apply for help and learn about other options that might be available. If you can’t find a program in your area, call 2-1-1 or your local housing authority for assistance.
Additional $100 million on the way for NJ COVID Relief
TRENTON – On 14 October 2020, Gov. Phil Murphy with US Senator Bob Menendez and Congressman Tom Malinowski announced $100 million in additional Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to support New Jersey COVID-19 affected residents and businesses.
$70 million will be distributed to restaurants, microbusinesses, and other small businesses through Phase 3 of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) Small Business Emergency Assistance Grant Program. $10 million of the funds will help small businesses purchase Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) through the NJEDA Small and Micro Business PPE Access Program. $15 million will support renters through the Department of Community Affairs’ (DCA) COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program; and $5 million will support food banks and other hunger relief efforts.
“Small businesses and the people they employ are the backbone of New Jersey’s economy, yet they have borne a disproportionate share of the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Governor Murphy. “It is incumbent on us to support them in any way possible. This additional funding helps us accomplish that goal.”
“Many restaurants have had a hard time staying afloat even with outdoor dining and are now facing an uncertain winter. Our economic recovery depends on the ability of our small businesses to survive until an effective treatment and cure for the coronavirus can be found,” said Senator Steve Sweeney. “We need Washington to step up now with another stimulus package to keep us from sliding further into recession.”
“I want to commend our state leaders for working together to get the federal coronavirus relief dollars we passed last spring into the hands of those who need it most,” said US Senator Bob Menendez. “This $100 million fund comes from the money we in Congress included in the CARES Act to help combat the economic fallout of this pandemic.”
Phase 3 of the Small Business Emergency Assistance Grant Program expands eligibility to any business with 50 or fewer full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) and increases the amount of funding businesses can receive. To ensure funds flow to businesses that need them most, Phase 3 grants are earmarked primarily forrestaurants and micro-businesses. $35 million will be dedicated to support businesses classified as “Food Services and Drinking Places” and $15 million is designated for “micro-businesses” with five or less employees. The remaining $20 million will be available to support any eligible business.
One third of each funding pool is designated for entities located in New Jersey Opportunity Zones.
$10 million will support the NJEDA’s new Small and Micro Business PPE Access Program, an public-private partnership for businesses with 100 employees or fewer to receive grants in the form of discounts on PPE purchased through NJEDA “Designated Vendors”.
Obtenga 3 reportes de crédito semanales gratis por un año
Obtenga 3 reportes de crédito semanales gratis por un año | Get 3 free credit reports every week for one year
Sin someter una declaración de renta al IRS usted puede todavía recibir un cheque de estímulo
Aún los que no estén obligados someter una declaración de renta al IRS pueden calificarse para recibir su cheque de estímulo llenando el formulario en la página web del IRS.
How by abandoning their vows to serve the public, American politicians precipitated the pandemic meltdown
In a brilliant New Yorker article, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor lays out the steps by which the abandonment of middle and poor Americans by both US political parties led to society’s present collapse. Although the coronavirus was the immediate trigger, the erosion of society’s wellbeing began way back in 1969. Collapse was an occurrence primed to happen at some point, and now just happened to be the time.
For 50 years, since 1979, national leaders increasingly backed away from their obligation to care for vulnerable and working class Americans. As they did, financial instability increased and the chance to acquire wealth became much more limited. Those were the perfect conditions for the meltdown known as American life in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Millions were driven into a state of deprivation that made happy lives impossible. And over time, the country destabilized economically. Students were still paying back college loans into their golden years. Aspiring homeowners could not afford mortgages. Urban residents live with air quality so poor that one in four has asthma and health concerns affect all areas of family’s lives. Poor health affects the’ ability to earn adequate incomes and keep up with the demands of digital life.
For years, the United States has gotten away with persistently chipping away at its weak welfare state by hiding or demonizing the populations most dependent on it. The poor are relegated as socially dysfunctional and inept, unable to cash in on the riches of American society ... The debate over the role of government in addressing income inequality, housing insecurity, debt accumulation, and health care continues, now against the grim backdrop of the raging coronavirus. It is difficult to articulate the speed with which the U.S. and, indeed, the world, has descended into an existential crisis.
Resources for ALICE home buyers and renters
Resources for ALICE home buyers and renters #p2
Vote YES on NJ Ballot Q#2 to protect gas tax funds from being raided like clean energy and health funds were
New Jersey Assemblyman Dr. Tim Eustace wants New Jersey voters to know that voting YES on Ballot Question #2 will enable extremely important protections of taxpayer dollars. Election Day this year falls on Tuesday, November 8.
Here are short and long versions of the reasons it’s important to vote YES to Q2. You already know how important it is that you go vote in the first place – right?
The short version of why YES on Q2
On the gas tax issue, Assm. Eustace comments:
The New Jersey gas tax increase of 23¢ is law – and it’s a mistake to think it will go away if people vote NO on Ballot Question #2 at the polls next Tuesday. Gov. Christie’s second-in-command discussed the ballot question in a 101.5 Radio interview, revealing that either she does not understand this law, or maybe Ms. Guadagno is hoping to draw out Republican voters who believe that the gas tax will go away if they vote no. But, this is not true.
It’s essential that gas tax money be used only for transportation and that this money not become accessible to the governor for use in the general budget. Gov. Christie used over $1.2 billion from the State’s Clean Energy Fund to plug general budget holes. In order to ensure that gas tax money can only be used for transportation expenditures, vote YES to Ballot Question #2 on Election Day.”
Dr. Eustace is the NJ Assembly Environment Committee Chair.
An NJ.com editorial echoes the assemblyman’s message:
…experts attest that if all that if annual gas tax revenue were dedicated exclusively to transportation projects, we could have filled a few more potholes by now … if (taxpayers) are tired of seeing large sums ($35 million last year, higher in previous years) scraped from the gas tax for purposes other than transportation, they can do something about it on Election Day.
Now that the gas tax increase is something we’ve all got to live with, we support Ballot Question 2, a constitutional amendment that dedicates every penny of that revenue to the Transportation Trust Fund.
That means the government can no longer raid the TTF to plug other budget holes – a lockbox provision that 30 other states already have.
Road to Repair offers a short but complete statement on why a YES vote to Q2 is so important:
The long version of why YES on Q2
On Facebook, Aaron Hyndman addressed this issue with a thorough analysis of the New Jersey gas tax ballot issue, “TO ANYONE STILL ON THE FENCE ABOUT NJ BALLOT QUESTION #2.” Hyndman is Communications Coordinator at the NJ Bike & Walk Coalition and the following is his statement:
I finally have a spare moment to contribute some thoughts regarding Ballot Question 2, so here are some things that I hope everyone will take into consideration:
First of all, there is a great deal of misinformation being spread by the Lt. Gov. and other interests that are opposed to the ballot question for reasons that are more self-serving and not purely altruistic. Too much is being said ABOUT the ballot question instead of discussing what is ACTUALLY in the ballot question, which reads as follows:
“
Do you approve amending the Constitution to dedicate all revenue from the State motor fuels tax and petroleum products gross receipts tax to the Transportation Trust Fund?
Has Sweeney convinced NJ legislators to turn their backs on giving a living wage to NJ workers any time soon?
Why will New Jersey have a ballot referendum next year (aka constitutional amendment) that will allow state voters to decide whether to approve SCR1500 and increase the state’s minimum wage – but only by 62¢ in 2018 to $9 per hour and $1.00 a year after that to finally reach $15 an hour eight years from now, in 2024?
I got a slightly confusing reply from State Senator Bob Gordon to my email regarding this issue and have been checking into what his reply could mean. Here are the facts I’ve learned:
New Jersey Democrats were able to pass Bill A-15 on 23 June 2016 to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in January 2017 and continue raising it in yearly $1.25 increments until it hit $15 an hour in 2021. But Christie vetoed that bill.
State legislators could then have put this same proposal on the ballot as a referendum, letting voters decide how quickly low wage workers could be lifted out of extreme poverty. They went the ballot referendum route, but opted for a much less robust hourly pay raise proposal: and that’s how SCR1500 came into being.
Perhaps the watered down bill is the brainchild of State Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), whose (now derailed?) plans for a gubernatorial bid next year undoubtedly included courting the vote of the small business community. This community has essentially been convinced to vote against their own interests by Big Money supporters of low worker wages who have promoted a fear campaign to discourage their support for the $15/hour minimum wage.
Although small businesses are one group that stands to majorly benefit from the increased buying power that residents will be able to spend if they earn more, Big Money folk are making them believe that an alternate – and false – reality exists. That’s because the profits of Big Money-backed businesses like Walmart and the Fast Food industry will be seriously curtailed if they need to pay employees fair wages instead of setting them up to receive welfare and foodstamps to supplement starvation pay.
When worker wages are low enough to force families onto social welfare programs, taxpayers at all levels of the spectrum end up subsidizing workers’ food, shelter and medical care. Forbes reports on Walmart employees vast use of the welfare system and Bloomberg points out:
According to one study, American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion dollars in public assistance. As it turns out, McDonald’s has a “McResource” line that helps employees and their families enroll in various state and local assistance programs. It exploded into the public when a recording of the McResource line advocated that full-time employees sign up for food stamps and welfare.
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private sector employer, is also the biggest consumer of taxpayer supported aid. According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, in many states, Wal-Mart employees are the largest group of Medicaid recipients.
Betraying progressive politics to court corporate dollars is what has made Clintons the Dem Party favorites
Fred Toledo shared this article on Facebook. He commented, “This is the sad, sorry and corrupt state of a party that once stood as the champion of the working class, the poor, the disenfranchised and the marginalized,” and shared excerpts from Bill Moyer and Michael Winship’s article on Wasserman Schultz:
Yet when the CFPB was drawing up new rules to make it harder for payday predators to feast on the poor, Rep. Wasserman Schultz co-sponsored a bill to delay those new rules by two years. How, you ask, could the head of the party’s national committee embrace such an appalling exploitation of working people?
Just follow the money. Last year, the payday loan industry spent $3.5 million lobbying; and as we wrote two weeks ago, in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, since 2009, payday lenders have bought protection from Democrats and Republicans alike by contributing $2.5 million or so to candidates from both parties, including her. That’s how “Representative” Wasserman Schultz, among others, wound up representing the predators instead of the poor.
…The lust for loot, which now defines the Democratic establishment, became pronounced in the Bill Clinton years, when the Clinton-friendly Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) abandoned its liberal roots and embraced “market-based solutions” that led to deregulation, tax breaks, and subsidies for the 1 percent. Seeking to fill coffers emptied by the loss of support from a declining labor movement, Democrats rushed into the arms of big business and crony capitalists.”
Sen Bob Menendez Hosts Empowerment Summit in Trenton on April 22 – Free
U.S. Senator Bob Menendez Hosts an Empowerment Summit for the Community
Friday 22 April 2016
9:00am-1:30pm
Trenton War Memorial
1 Memorial Drive
Trenton, NJ 08608
Cost: Free
Lunch will be served
RSVP here
Visit the summit event page for additional information
Kristof: It’s not easy for white Americans to own the advantages systemic racism gives them
© World Economic Forum
swiss-image.ch/Photo by Monika Flueckiger
In Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and his wife and co-author Sheryl WuDunn told the stories of women oppressed by prostitution slavery – or just oppressive sentiment concerning women – in Asian and African countries. Now they are focusing on the disparities and injustice in American society that have been created by gender and wealth disparities and that favor people with certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, a project (and book) they call A Path Appears.
In a 2014 article, WaPo’s Emily Badger interviews Kristof on the topic of systemic racism: how it affects its victims and why it’s so difficult for white Americans to see that their advantages cause other people to be disadvantaged.
I grew up in rural Oregon, in a blue-collar area that has been very hard hit by meth, by family breakdown, by unemployment. And a lot of my friends and classmates have been struggling with all these issues. There is a real issue of personal responsibility and self-destructive behaviors — this is real. But it also arises from a context of hopelessness, a context in which people feel that there’s no escape, and then they self-medicate. And then that hopelessness becomes self-fulfilling. And that’s true of whites, and that’s true of blacks…
Emily Badger: You’ve cited a lot of data in these columns that seems pretty powerful and hard to argue with.
People were very taken aback by the figure in particular that the wealth gap between whites and blacks today in America is greater than the black-white wealth gap was in Apartheid South Africa. That was a factoid that clearly shocked a lot of people. But then the lesson that a lot of people drew from it was “well, boy, that just underscores how irresponsible so many African-Americans are,” which is precisely the opposite of the point I was trying to make.
…I think that there’s no doubt that successful people have this narrative that “I succeeded because I worked hard, studied hard, obeyed the law, and that just shows that anybody in this country can succeed if they will just behave themselves.” I think about my friends growing up, who were in many cases, just as smart and hard-working as anybody else, but didn’t have a family that pushed them. So if they made the decision to drop out of school, that was a decisions that really haunted them. I think it’s really hard for people who were born on third base, and whose friends were born on third base, and who assume kind of a third-base context, it’s really hard to understand the enormous obstacles that face those who in early life encountered a much less rosy environment. It’s so easy to hit a home run from third base and say “boy, this is pretty easy, why can’t everyone else do this?”
Hillary’s BFFs Wasserman-Schultz & Rahm Emanuel: called out by Moyers for persecuting the working poor
Rep. Excerpt from the 24 March 2016 article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on TPM.com on the united intentionality of Wasserman Schultz, Rahm Emanuel and both Clintons to both shift the Dem Party away from representing working folk and also persecute the working poor:
Debbie Wasserman Schultz … embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.
She has played games with the party’s voter database, been accused of restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that super delegates — strongly establishment and pro-Clinton — are necessary at the party’s convention so deserving incumbent officials and party leaders don’t have to run for delegate slots “against grassroots activists.” Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of entitlement.
But here’s just about the worst of it. Rep. Wasserman Schultz — the people’s representative, right? — has aligned herself with corporate interests out to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s effort to create national standards for the payday-lending industry, a business that in particular targets the poor. Payday loans, as Yuka Hayashi writes at The Wall Street Journal, “are quick credits of a few hundred dollars, with effective annual interest rates ranging between 300% and 500%. Loans are due in a lump sum on the borrower’s next payday, a structure that often sends people into cycles of debt by forcing them to take out new loans to repay the old ones.”
According to the nonpartisan Americans for Financial Reform, this tail-chasing cycle of “turned” loans to pay off previous loans makes up about 76 percent of the payday loan business. The Pew Charitable Trust found that in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, the average payday loan customer takes out nine such loans a year, which usually has them mired in debt for about half a year.