Joe Kyrillos had a much stronger performance last night in the NJ 101.5/Verizon FIOS1 debate against Bob Menendez than he had last week at Montclair State.
In his opening statement Kyrillos framed the hour as a choice between Menendez’s “Corzine economic strategy of more spending, more taxes and more debt.” With the exception of $46 billion in defense spending cuts Menendez touted, more spending, more taxes and more debt were at the heart of all of the accomplishments the incumbent pointed to as his justification for another term. Throughout the hour Menendez called for more federal spending as the way to improve the economy while Kyrillos called for a “private sector stimulus package” of lower tax rates and less onerous regulation.
Menendez answered the Corzine label by tying Kyrillos to George W. Bush and former Governor Christie Whitman.
“Bob is laughable,” Kyrillos said to the charge that he favors millionaires over the middle class. “Bob protects lots of millionaires. Jon Corzine is one of them, along with the many others he takes money from.”
” I can’t believe you’re still talking about that,” Kyrillos said in answer to Menendez asking “Why would your not reject Mitt Romney’s 47% comment?” “I issued a statement right way saying I support 100% of Americans. Mitt can say what he wants. You issue a lot of press releases Senator, you should read some of mine.”
Each candidate got to ask the other two questions.
In his second question to Kyrillos, Menendez confronted Joe on his “War on Women,” citing 6 votes Monmouth’s senior State Senator cast against funding for women’s health care and a vote that he “walked out on” regarding an equal pay bill. Kyrillos handled it well, point to the “millions” he voted for in women’s health care funding over his career and the need to balance the budget. Regarding the equal pay bill, Kyrillos said, “that was not a women’s bill, it was a lawyers bill. “I don’t women want to sue their bosses. I want them to be the boss!”
Kyrillos questions to Menendez were consistent with the “Corzine economic strategy” theme he had set for the debate. In his first question, Joe asked if, given the economy since Menendez has taken office, would the incumbent senator do anything differently. Menendez rattled off the same talking points he used in both debates so far and proudly said he would do everything the same.
In his second question to Menendez, Kyrillos asked what the incumbents jobs plan, “besides spending more and raising more taxes.” Menendez took the bait and rattled off the federal monies he’s brought to New Jersey’s BioTech companies, solar energy companies and transportation projects.” “That’s all government spending,” Kyrillos said. “No, no, no,’ said Menendez trying to amend his answer before moderator Eric Scott cut him off.
As well as Kyrillos performed, there was no game changing moment that will dominate the news. As he did the the first debate, Menendez performed very well. He has a well practiced script of talking points that he accesses with ease and will not divert from.
The final debate will be on Sunday October 14 at 3PM, during the second half of the Colts/Jets game and the Lions/Eagles games. The will be broadcast on ABC television. Set your DVR.
Who do you think won the second senatorial debate?
During a campaign stop in Iowa yesterday GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney shared a story about how he and Ann mistakenly crashed a Christmas party where he met one of the Ex-Seals who was killed in Benghazi on September 11.
U.S. Senate candidates Joe Kyrillos and the incumbent Bob Menendez will square off in their second debate of the campaign tonight at 7PM. NJ 101.5 will broadcast the debate which is being moderated by the radio stations New Director Eric Scott. Verizon FIOS1 will live stream the event.
Questions of the candidates can be called into 1-800-282-1015, sent via text by texting DEBATE to 89000 or via Twitter: #SenateDebateNJ. Additionally, there is will be a live interactive blog on NJ 101.5’s site.
The editorial board of the Asbury Park Press Neptune Nudniks want the State Attorney General’s office to monitor the ballot positioning draw for Monmouth County elections until such time as the legislature takes the chance out of ballot positioning.
Even though they acknowledge that there is no way to prove their allegations, the Nudniks are basically accusing Monmouth and Essex County Clerks, and the Monmouth GOP and Essex Democrats by inference, of fraud because the results of ballot positioning draws have defied statistical probability by huge margins over the past few decades.
Ballot drawings should be watched. But the Attorney General or Jimmy Carter don’t have to do the watching. The APP should send a reporter and write about the process.
One reason this matters, the Nudniks and the “experts” they refer to say is because voters who are uninformed about candidates will vote for candiates in the first ballot position. It seems to me that “voters” who are uninformed about the candidates stay home. They APP could impact this problem by doing a better job covering candidates and campaigns.
Have you heard about ecoATM? It’s a really cool way to dispose of old cell phones or MP3 players and get some cash or donate to charity.
You put your device into an ATM-like machine which scans it, identifies it and gives you a range of prices that it will pay for the device based upon its condiditon. If you like the prices, the machine asks that you insert a cable into the device so that it can evaluate the condition. After a few moments a cash offer appears on the machine’s screen. If you accept, it dispenses cash after giving you the option to donate a portion to a charity. If you don’t accept, you get the device back.
Yesterday I took a Blackberry 9700 with a broken screen and three Palm Treos that I haven’t used for years to the machine at the Monmouth Mall. The machine is outside of Modell’s and Boscov’s at the southern end of the mall. There were two young women using the machine when I got there and several others watching the process. I was quite surprised when the machine offered the young women $41 for the used phone. I figured $5 or $10 would be the most offered. I got $39 for the broken Blackberry and $1 each for the Palms.
Such transactions may become illegal by this time next year. Selling your car, furniture, books, art or clothes might also be illegal if you don’t get the permission of or pay a vig to the manufacturer of the product, depending on the outcome of a case the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is a case involving Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai man who came to the United States in 1997 to study at Cornell and stepped into the American Dream in the bookstore. He noticed that the textbooks he was required to buy cost a great deal more at Cornell’s bookstore than he could buy them for back home in Thailand. He bought his books in Thailand. He also bought enough books in Thailand, published by Wiley & Sons, to resell to his classmates and pocket $1.2 million in the process.
Wiley sued for copyright infringement, arguing that the first sale doctrine does not apply to goods first sold outside of the United States. A jury agreed with Wiley and awarded the publisher $600,000. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict and now the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case on October 29.
It seems to defy logic and fairness that the manufacturer of a product would retain property rights after the valid sale of their product, regardless of where the sale took place. However, SCOTUS was divided on this issue 4-4 in a 2010 case involving Costco and Swiss watch maker Omega. Justice Kagen recused herself from the Costco/Omega case but will participate in Kirtsaeng v Wiley.
Don’t count on SCOTUS making sense. We’ve seen them declare that women have the right to declare that embryos and fetuses are trespassers invading their privacy, the punishment for such trespass being death, and that penalties are really taxes, even when Congress and the President says they are not taxes.
The Democratic candidate for County Clerk got a boost of sorts today from the Asbury Park Press.
Michael Steinhorn is making an issue out of the fact that the Monmouth GOP won the first ballot position in 30 of the last 33 general elections and that a Republican Clerk was responsible for all thirty drawings. There is apparently nothing else to write about in the Clerk’s race, because the APP gave Steinhorn free space and an inflammatory headline, Are the Monmouth Republicans cheating?
Ballot positions are chosen in public when two capsules, pictures of which on here on APP, one with the word “Republican” and the other with the word “Democrat,” are put into a box, shaken up and Bertha Sumick, the Deputy County Clerk in charge of elections picks one. 30 times out of the last 33, the Republican capsule was chosen. APP quotes two mathematics professors saying that the odds of the happening are 1.5 million to one. Steinhorn speculates that the capsules have been marked somehow to feel different from each other.
Theoretically, the winning ballot position should be shared 50-50 on a valid random drawing. Just to test the theory, I flipped a coin 33 times. It came up heads 22 times and tails 11 times.
County Clerk M. Claire French insists the annual drawings are above board. She noted that when the Democrats held the office of County Clerk in 1978 and 1979, that the Democrats won the first ballot position in each of those years.
The duplicity of Bob Menendez and the creation of Middle Class ghettos
During Bob Menendez’s first year in the U.S. Senate, 2006, there was a health care bill before the Senate designed to make insurance premiums more affordable for small businesses. The bill would have allowed small businesses to join together as larger groups in order to enjoy the economies of scale in their insurance purchases that large corporations enjoy. Chambers of commerce and other business associations would have been allowed to form groups to decrease the cost of health insurance so that more of the members could afford to insure the health of more of the employees and families.
At the time, I was a leader of the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce and a member of the National Federation of Independent Business. The company I owned was paying 100% of the insurance premiums of its employees. Premiums were raising at about 13% per year. It was getting difficult to continue to provide health insurance. Potential hires who did not need insurance because their spouse’s employer provided it became the most attractive candidates to employ. Increasing insurance premiums consumed what would have been raises to loyal employees.
NFIB was lobbying hard for the bill. It had already passed the Republican House and President Bush had indicated he would sign the bill if it passed in the Senate. The Republican Senate majority support for the bill but the Democrats were filibustering. NFIP worked its members to contact their Democratic Senators asking that they stop the filibuster and allow the bill to be voted on.
I wrote Mendendez and Senator Frank Lautenberg asking that they support the bill. As I expected, they didn’t and the bill never made it to the Senate floor vote. Lautenberg wrote back thanking me for contacting him. Menendez wrote back telling me why he supported the bill that he voted to defeat.
Menendez’s reelection campaign is just as duplicitous as his letter to me in June of 2006.
The theme of our junior senator’s campaign is The Middle Class Is Under Attack. He says he’s fighting for the Middle Class and wants to rebuild the economy from the “middle out.”
