Woodstock's Cranky Aftermath

Talk of “Freedom” was in the air at Tea Party Express rally for Steve Lonegan’s Senate campaign at the New Egypt Speedway on Saturday.  Add Richie Havens and some Jefferson Airplane and you are close to a veritable Woodstock, minus the idealism, marijuana and thankfully, public nudity.
Many of the people at Saturday’s rally in Plumsted Township were part of The Age of Aquarius, but they’ve traded weed for Lipitor, worry about fiber intake and sometimes need a good place to sit.  Their folk singer at the rally is lamenting government spending, high taxes and Obamacare.
The Tea Party likes to think it challenges the establishment and conveys much of the rhetoric of getting government off our backs and challenging the system.  They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore, to borrow the phrase from Howard Beale in “Network.”
The Tea Party is the product of the politics of disillusionment.  They make an easy target for their opponents who write them off as “kooks” and “crackpots.”
Tea Party members have some legitimately overlooked grievances about President Obama and the federal government.
·         Is the government’s ability to gather my text messages a good use of resources in the name of fighting terror?  Why should they be entitled to breach our privacy?
·         Is the mandate to buy health insurance fair?
·         Why should the government bail out big businesses?
·         Do we have any business bombing Syria?  (Diplomacy may carry the day here.)
·         Why should our country continue to compound additional debt beyond the $17 trillion outstanding?
Politicians have capitalized on this disillusionment with great effect.  Saturday’s rally had its share of political double talk.

Sarah Palin, Alaska’s former governor and Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 Presidential election, lamented the disservice to our veterans by closing national landmarks and a few breaths later urging the House to hold the line on the government shutdown.
Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator, speaking about maintaining our nation’s strong defense and the importance of the navy to protect shipping lanes and warned about the mounting debt.   Nothing was said about how defense spending – as well as entitlement spending – fuel the deficit.
To be fair, liberals have their own share of opportunists and double talkers that fail to account for the cost of expanded programs or new taxes to pay for them, when on the stump.  Also, political rallies are the last place where you’d expect candor about solving the nation’s problems, since the tone of political discourse has as much coherence as a pro-wrestling rant.
If conservatives -- or any politician in the political spectrum -- wanted to be honest and steer us away from a “socialist path” and tame the biggest risks to our government’s solvency, our seniors would lose their Social Security and Medicare. 
That would make the Woodstock generation, who spent a lifetime paying into these programs, much crankier and even more disillusioned.

What's on my mind...(July 21, 2010 edition)

Is there a cooler job than working on Mythbusters? They get paid to break stuff and use explosives all in the name of science. Also, Kari Byron's on the set.


My sister came across some videos of Don Kirschner's Rock Concert and put some videos up on her Facebook page of the Ramones blasting through four songs.... I came across this treat by T-Rex.


On a more serious note, NJ Gov. Chris Christie is proposing that the state take over the Atlantic City casino district in an effort to save it. He's also planning to sink more money into the ill-fated mondo-mall by the Meadowlands -- Xanadu. What happened to the magic of the marketplace? Meanwhile he's letting horse racing at the Meadowlands, a big money loser, fall by the wayside. I could see the rationale for ending subsidies for horse racing. The market doesn't support it anymore. But the other two steps defy "conservative," small government. It is essentially broadening government oversight of Atlantic City, the casino business and now is putting the government in the mall business. Xanadu, which shares the name of a lousy Olivia Newton John movie, has cursed any company attempting to complete the $2 billion shopping center. The state is now sinking good money after misspent money. New Jersey has enough difficulty filling the stores in its malls and downtown shopping districts. Xanadu might be best served running as a flea market, since the current economy is not going to support all of these luxury retailers that were originally planned for it.

SNY showed an hour-long documentary celebrating the 1986 New York Mets. I love this team, but it's a grim reminder about how long it has been since the Mets have won a World Series.

Why Chris Christie won...

In a nutshell, this is why Chris Christie defeated N.J. Gov. Jon S. Corzine:

• Taxes -- Jon Corzine didn't address the property tax burden during his tenure, even after raising sales and income taxes. New Jersey manages to have high sales, income and property taxes. This is sending the middle class to the exits and has stifled job creation in the state.
• Corruption -- If Attorney General Anne Milgram made a significant arrest for municipal corruption outside Atlantic City, Chris Christie's big advantage would have been blunted. Arrests in Atlantic City don't count in this category. Mr. Magoo can spot municipal corruption there. You can set your calendar by elected Atlantic City officials being indicted.

Jon Corzine's a decent man with good intentions. I'd like to have him as an uncle. However, the Star Ledger precisely summed up his role in NJ politics and the state's Democratic Party: "Corzine is the chaplain on a pirate ship, not really its captain." He wasn't beholden to the power brokers in state government, since he paid for his own campaigns. However, the party bosses -- at least the ones out of legal trouble -- still hold a lot of power. Corzine ceded a lot of authority to them.

Chris Christie won a tarnished trophy in this election. He's going into the Governor's office in January with a projected $8 billion budget deficit, a rotten business climate, and Democrats controlling the legislature. Most NJ resident's disagree with Christie's conservative social views (anti-abortion), but this was an electon primarily about pocketbook issues. He's pledged to lower taxes, but has been scant on details about how to pay for tax cuts. The legislature holds the purse strings and I don't see them crafting budgets that will cut urban aid, education or health care. I'm expecting a standoff in the next budget cycle and would not be surprised if there is a government shutdown. Corzine had a standoff against the legislature in 2006 and they're in the same party. Christie has much more different budget priorities that appeal to his suburban backers than the Democrats. His interests might be best served if he provoked a budget fight and shut down state offices. The public might realize that the world won't end just because Trenton is idled for a few weeks.

A day when I wished I was in journalism again...

New Jersey's air just got a bit cleaner after the FBI's corruption sweep led to 44 arrests two weeks ago. The stench of corruption is a part of life here. Prior the busts, more than 100 elected officials in the state have been arrested since 2001. Unfortunately, nobody is surprised about the arrests, the question is usually a matter of "Who'd they get this time?" The angle about the rabbi charged with selling kidneys on the black market, however, adds a unique twist to the usual garden variety shakedowns and bribery in municipal corruption cases. It was a day that I wished I was in journalism. A newsroom can be an electrifying place when there's a big story to pursue. You always want to know what happens next.

Here are some of the thoughts that I had about the arrests:

-- Kudos to any reporters who worked the organ selling angle into the lede of their stories. Bribery in New Jersey is not too shocking, but black market organ selling is sensational and needed to be high in the story. Yes, 44 people being arrested is a big deal. Yes, the Hudson County political establishment and the Syrian Jews in Monmouth County took a big blow here over these allegations of scuzzy behavior. You have to figure that more than 100 officials have been arrested in recent years. A rabbi dealing kidneys and marking them up by 1500 percent is a shocking charge. The writers of The Sopranos would have been hard pressed to come up with that twist.
-- A lot of the coverage was chasing NJ 101.5 at first, and they were first with the detail about human organ trafficking. Some other news sites were hesitant to run with that detail until after Thursday's press conference when the indictments were made public. I think the station's friendliness to Chris Christie helped their reporters here.
-- It was disconcerting to see that the Asbury Park Press, the hometown paper for Deal, resorting to using the AP to cover "the insular Syrian Jewish community at the New Jersey Shore." Alesha Williams Boyd's article captured the reaction at the temple where Rabbi Edmund Nahum, a rabbi accused of money laundering, worked. It was a missed opportunity for the paper to send a few people from the Neptune office to talk to people at the temples or even the coffee shops on Norwood Ave to provide additional coverage. I used to work in the town, when I was a floor layer. In my observation of Deal, people flashed a lot of money around, drove expensive cars, and put a lot of stock in social status, but I wouldn't call the Syrian Jews insular. It's also one of the most picturesque communities in Monmouth County and probably one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. Where was the color to really illustrate what happened here? Alesha had two bylines on the web today, so she doesn't deserve any of the blame. Couldn't an editor have picked up the phone or left the office to help out? Could the paper have pulled someone from the other Monmouth bureaus? Why not send the reporters out to gather the information and have a sharp rewrite guy take their notes to make the stories sing? To the Asbury Park Press' credit, they identified Dwek very early in the proceedings as the cooperating witness.
-- Dwek! If this guy was damaged goods to begin with, why were people so eager to do business with him?! Would you want to do business with a guy who tried to pass off a $25 million bad check? There really aren't many IQ tests in politics or wealthy communities?
-- Joe Doria stepped down from Corzine's cabinet after his house was raided. This guy was a long time Democratic staple in state politics-- a former Assembly Speaker! No charges have been filed. Media reports are saying he met with Dwek.
-- "Political Consultant' Jack Shaw died shortly after criminal charges were filed in this case. Authorities haven't made a final determination on the cause of death but they are not ruling out suicide. That definitely will leave many wondering what secrets he kept with him or what secrets he told the authorities. He was also not in good health, according to media reports.
I really hope justice is served here. New Jersey's political culture is a swamp that needs to be drained. We're all paying for it with politicians handing off sweetheart deals to their friends. Sadly, the 44 arrested is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Let's hope the guilty do some real time and wake up the rest of the political establishment to mend their ways.

Trenton's a swamp that needs to be drained

Ballot questions in N.J. are often overlooked when people vote. Most of the time nobody pounds the pavement about them or advertises a point of view on tv (except in California where many things go on the ballot). However, their impact ends up being felt years later when people wonder "How the hell did we get into this mess?" This year, New Jersey had two ballot questions and they were ingeniously unclear. Here's Question 1:

QUESTION
Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which
provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law
enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds
by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an
instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential
governmental functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or
liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay
the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the
principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the
debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of
revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are
from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to
another provision of the Constitution?

Yep, that's what we were able to vote on. Believe it or not, it can impact our states finances, which are a mess from all the debt on its books ($3 billion a year in debt service). The newspapers also didn't have much to say about it either. Therefore, I had to go to the League of Women Voters to get a true interpretation. See page 3 for the implications. Where are the reporters in New Jersey to write about this stuff? Isn't it their role to interpret complex material and improve voter understanding?

Unfortunately, our politicians are not being held accountable either. This is an act of intellectual dishonesty. If our politicians cannot be up front with the public, what good are they. It just leads me to say, Trenton is a swamp that needs to be drained.

The NFL Blows and Call Me when the Election's Over

Originally posted Nov. 30, 2007

The NFL blows and call me when the election is over... Current mood: tired Category: News and Politics

I'm tired of the 2008 election and it's not even 2008 yet. I like Ron Paul the most of the bunch, but nobody takes him seriously and I won't join the Republican party to vote for him in the primary. After that, I'd vote for either Obama or Edwards. Yeah, there isn't much in common between Paul or the two democrats. But I tend to side with libertarians on social issues and the democrats are the lesser of two evils when it comes to the major parties on social issues.

... The McGreeveys deserve each other. I think the family court judge should find away to confine our former governor and his estranged wife to a cell together. I can't believe our former Gov. took up court time over a kid's birthday party. We wonder why our legal system is so screwed up, but it's because we get the government we deserve. In this case, we go to court over the slimmest disagreements or when we face the slightest hardships. The judge should also sanction the attorneys involved for allowing it to degenerate to this point. If you have courts in a better position to threaten attorneys for frivolous cases, attorneys will find themselves to be in a better position to say "You're wasting your time, your money and the court's time" to a client. At least the judge was sensible enough to ridicule the parents.

...The NFL in its infinite wisdom took one of the best games of the year and reserved it for their own TV network despite the billions they get from their TV partners at ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS. The NFL is overplaying its hand. It's bad enough that they stretch 1 hour of playing time into three and a half hours of TV time filled with commercials. Now the NFL is actually hoping to aggravate its fans into complaining to their cable operators so the public will pay for their channel. Screw the NFL. They're as bad as the Yankees. The masters at the NFL should learn the lessons from boxing. A sport that once showed title fights on Wide World of Sports on Saturdays took more and more of their fights to pay-per-view -- effectively narrowing their audience to the highest bidder. Now nobody cares about boxing. I can't name one title holder. The coverage is relegated to inside the sports section -- somewhere after high school sports and before equestrian events. The NFL should watch its step here, because their long term interest should be focused on the product on the field -- not the pipeline of delivery to the fan's home ...

Now that the Mets traded Lastings Milledge, what's the over/under in the number of seasons it takes for him to become an All-Star? I'm figuring the 2010 season. The Mets inevitably find a way to do this.

That's all for now. Just some rambling before I call it a night...