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.

Why news coverage stinks ...

Alisa Miller, the head of Public Radio International, shows the shortcomings of U.S. media coverage and how it fails to give a balanced view of the world. By the way, we're coming up on the two-year anniversary of the loss of America's Princess, Anna Nicole Smith. Radio geniuses Ron & Fez set the appropriate tone for coverage here at the time of her death. Part Two can be found at this link. Both are sound files that can be downloaded.

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.

A few of my favorite things

Everybody knows how I like to preach the gospel about The Wire. Here's some other stuff that I like:
www.accuradio.com Listening Post and Future Perfect Radio



How can you hate Robert Duvall's performance here. It's inspired lunacy. "You either surf or fight...If I say it's safe to surf this beach, it's safe to surf this beach." Apocalypse Now Redux (a longer version) has more footage about him pursuing Capt. Willard and Lance for stealing his surfboard.

Does God really protect the stupid? Watch this video:



Some people go out of their way to prove Darwin right.


Yeah, I'm voting for Obama. I want us out of Iraq. I tend to agree more with the Libertarians. Take a look at its platform here. Zimmer and Lautenberg are not getting my vote for Senate -- Jason Scheurer is.


I like news shows that take the piss out of Bush. See Keith Olbermann's Countdown.

--30--

Joining a first aid squad

When I was younger, I had a very weak stomach. Many of my car trips were spent with my head out the window splashing what I ate for breakfast down the side of my parents' orange '72 Chevy Nova as we drove from Point Pleasant to Red Bank. Seasickness was an element of every fishing trip when I was 8 or 9. My breakfasts often served as chum for the fish. After emptying my stomach, I would have to rest inside the party boat's cabin. Even into early adulthood, changing diapers sometimes would test my stomach. When I joined Metuchen EMS, my family was stunned. They weren't stunned by my willingness to volunteer for an organization or that I wanted to help sick people. They were stunned that I was willing to test a weak stomach in such a fashion.

I wanted to do something involving health care. I like the intellectual challenge, but I didn't have the grades for medical school. I did better in my English classes than my science classes, however, and started a career in journalism, eventually becoming a health care reporter. I also worked as a copy editor at the Daily Record. As the slot editor, I had to edit the obituary page. You can take stock of one's life and commitments when they try to boil it down to a few paragraphs. When it comes time to write mine after I'm in my 80s, I don't want it only to say "Bill thought South Park really kicked ass." I also don't want it to serve as some simple regurgitation of my resume. When the kids get older, you need to do other stuff to keep you busy. Those commitments outside the job may as well be worthwhile -- whether it's community service or just doing stuff that makes you happy.

This is ultimately about karma. Give and expect nothing in return except the feeling that you helped someone at their moment of greatest need. I'm not independently wealthy where I could do this full time, since EMTs make less per hour than an average Costco worker. I'm not one of those starry-eyed idealists who think they can save the world and cure hunger, fight disease and right all of the world's wrongs. I'm too old for that idealism and I have to cut the grass. However, I can get off the couch one night a week and the occasional weekend to ride on an ambulance. Metuchen is not as busy as some of the Edison squads, but there are still calls in the middle of the night.

I've been taking EMT classes since early September. Every weekend I spend 8 hours learning about how to respond to diabetes emergencies, cardiac, and respiratory emergencies. We take exams every few weeks. In a few weeks, I'll be doing clinical time at an emergency room in Perth Amboy on a Friday and again on a Saturday. It should be a real test and a definite change of pace from Metuchen.