Opinion: In today’s pages: Aftermath – election, foreclosures
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Like everyone else, Times opinionaters are slowly recovering from election delirium and are now surveying the landscape. What we find, among other things, is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doing something about the mortgage crisis in California.
Is it enough? The editorial page says his proposed 90-day moratorium on foreclosures is a start, but we’ve got some advice for him: follow up with the Legislature, and get a little more aggressive with lenders and borrowers who otherwise might not act in their own best interests.
On the plus side, the plan would provide immediate relief to borrowers while still requiring them (and lenders) to endure some pain in the long run, lessening the unfairness to borrowers who haven’t fallen behind on their payments. The governor’s bill has at least three notable shortcomings, however. There’s no enforcement mechanism to make lenders keep their pledges to modify loans. Second-mortgage holders and investors, who have resisted some efforts to modify loans, wouldn’t be pressured to accept reduced returns. And there’s no effort to pull recalcitrant borrowers into negotiations over the new terms.
Let’s come back to the editorial page in a moment, but first let’s see what Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez has to say about the audacity – and Americanness – of hope.
We fetishize hope because it helps us as we grasp at a favorable future. We wrap ourselves in it like no other people in the world because we tell ourselves failure isn’t an option. We have no choice but to cheer when a president-elect tells us we can put our hands ‘on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
Law professor Goodwin Liu explains the amendment-versus-revision argument behind the latest legal challenges to Proposition 8. And Bob Stern and Tracy Westen of the Institute for Governmental Studies walk us through suggestions for changing California’s increasingly burdensome initiative process. They note that the record for voter-petition ballot measures was set in November 1990 with 18 initiatives. (Quick – what is California’s all-time record for ballot measures, including ones put on by the Legislature? Correct! 48 in 1914.)
Initiatives should not impose supermajority requirements on future legislative or voter actions unless they pass by the same supermajority. In other words, a measure passing by 51% could not require a 67% vote in the future, say, to raise or lower taxes. Simple majorities should not be permitted to disenfranchise larger future majorities.
Now let’s go back to the editorial page and consider this: Did Google blow the dream of making the contents of the world’s libraries available for free to anyone with internet access? Its settlement with book publishers may be a significant backward step on the road toward a virtual, and free, uber-library.
It’s unfortunate that Google and the publishers didn’t take advantage of the emerging standards in the electronic book field to enable libraries to acquire and circulate digital versions of out-of-print titles. Companies such as Overdrive are providing a model for e-book lending that preserves the spirit of free public libraries. Google and the publishers should look for ways to apply that model to their new effort, helping libraries keep pace with a reading public that’s increasingly eager and equipped for a world with less paper.
The editorial page also weighs in on the thorny case – U.S. Supreme Court case, that is - of a guitarist who lost an arm after using a drug that should have carried a clearer warning. The case has little to do with guitars, but an awful lot to do with the relationship between federal and state laws, and the standards courts should use when grappling with preemption questions dealing with Congress and the Food and Drug Administration.
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)