You can fool some of the people some of the time…..

Monmouth County GOP nominee for Congress Ernesto Cullari’s campaign manager, Charles Measley, just called from Trenton where he and Cullari were filing petitions with 319 signatures for the 6th District GOP primary election.

Measley said that a reporter from The Star Ledger asked Cullari what he thought of Anna Little quitting politics to become a singer.

Cullari told the reporter he didn’t know what to think and that Little seems to keep changing her mind about what office she wants to seek, according to Measley.

In case you missed it, yesterday was April 1.

Measley said that by the time he left the Secretary of State’s office at about 1PM, neither Little or anyone from her team had arrived to file petitions. No fooling.  The deadline is 4PM.

Update

Little arrived at the Secretary of State’s office to file her petitions at about 2:30.

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Little Quits Politics, Launches Musical Career

Falling short of the required 200 signatures to be a candidate for Congress, former Highlands Mayor Anna Little announced this morning that she is quitting politics and launching a career as a singer.

In an email blast to supporters the former freeholder and 2010 GOP nominee for Congress from New Jersey’s 6th district said,

“I have come to the conclusion that I can do more to serve we the people, born and unborn, with my God given musical talent than I can in the rough and tumble world of politics.   We have made a difference together, you and I, over the last two years that has given rise to certain opportunities that you made possible.

Governor Chris Christie has offered me the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium.  Texas Governor Rick Perry said he would have me sing the Anthem at the Cowboys-Giants game in Arlington this November.  Christie and Perry have promised to put a good word in for me with the 2013 Inaugural Committee to sing at President Romney’s swearing in ceremony or at the very least at one of the balls.

Ernesto Cullari has introduced me to his contacts at Disney.  Their talent scout thinks I can be the next Angela Lansbury, who according to Disney’s site is everyone’s cup of tea.  I could be next in line to play Mrs. Potts in the sequel and reprises of Beauty and the Beast on film and on Broadway.

In the meantime, I will be replacing the Kate Smith recording of God Bless America during the daily sunset ceremony at the Sea Gulls Nest at Sandy Hook.  Proprietor  Ed Segall is a big Pallone supporter.  Given the opportunity to serve we the people, born and unborn, with my musical talent, it is just not right to put my new employer in such an uncomfortable position.  I can see Sandy Hook from my house.”

Little, who lost the Monmouth GOP endorsement for Congress in the 6th district to Cullari, had counted on the Middlesex GOP to deliver the 200 required signatures during the convention that nominated her last Saturday, March 24.  However, at the end of the day, there was only 75 signatures.  Little collected another 135 signatures last week.  Upon learning that Cullari had filed 500 signatures with the NJ Secretary of State on Friday, including those of 120 Middlesex County GOP convention delegates, Little realized that her petition would probably not survive a challenge given the duplicate signatures.

Little’s email continued:

This is not the end of Anna’s Army, but a new beginning.  With my voice, we the people, born and unborn, can transform the culture of our country that you have been working so hard to save. 

My backup chorus will be known as Anna’s Army.  You can participate by volunteering to sing in the chorus, buying our CD’s and downloading songs from our soon to be launched website, or by making Little contributions. 

All the Little contributions you make will go to the same work they have always gone to, just in a different form.

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Bishops Feeling Blue Over Green

The Asbury Park Board of Education does not have enough green to get a blue football field, according to a report in the Asbury Park Sun.

700 members of the community presented the deadlocked Board of Education with a petition asking that the new field of the Blue Bishops be covered with blue astro turf.  Opposition wasn’t about the color, it was about money.  Blue turf will cost $45,000 more than green turf, according to business administrator Geoffrey Hastings.

The board has $825,000 of their $66 million Abbott funded budget allocated for the new football field….$700,000 for the turf and and $107,000 to cover change orders or unforeseen expenses.  Nobody said the BoE or the Asbury Park Sun…whoever came up with those numbers…is good at math.

The board was deadlocked 4-4 over the color of the field until one of the supporters of blue left the meeting.  Then the mean greenies passed the budget without the $45,000 for the blue turf.

State monitor Lester Richens said the board couldn’t afford the extra money that is coming from Trenton by way of New Jersey income taxes.

MMM is happy to offer the following suggestions to the Asbury Park Board of Eduction:

1) Go through the budget looking for additional math errors.  Maybe you already have the money.

2) Regardless of the math, put the turf out to bid again.  $45,000 is not much in a $700,000 order.  Competition is a wonderful thing.  That’s why we have bids.

3) Hire this blogger to find waste in your budget. I’ll find the $45,000 and a lot more.  Pay me 20% of every dollar over $45,000 I find in unnecessary and wasteful spending. 30% if anyone is indicted as a result of my findings. Pay me nothing if I don’t find anything.  Give me 30 days and complete access.

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Not Front Page News

Christie Administration continuing McGreevey/Corzine practice of keeping utilities monies intended for municipalities.

Lost in the hysteria of Democrats fighting with each other was news buried on page 3 of yesterday’s Asbury Park Press that actually affects your property taxes.

The Editorial Board of the Monmouth and Ocean Counties paper of record actually met with local mayors!  Call that progress.  MMM criticised the APP editorial board last month for sitting down with Newark Mayor Cory Booker for no reason other than to boost Booker’s statewide name ID when they, until yesterday, hardly, if ever, meet with local mayors.

Middletown Mayor Tony Fiore and Long Branch Mayor Adam Schneider met with the Neptune Nudniks on Wednesday, at the behest of the League of Municipalities.  The mayors’ purpose was to bring attention to the State’s decades old practice of keeping the energy receipts tax that public utilities pay.

In energy receipts tax has been in existence for decades.  It was originally set up in lieu of property taxes to compensate municipalities for the utility infrastructure rights of way.  The tax used to be broken out on your utility bill.  It was paid by the utilities directly to the municipalities.

In 2002, during the McGreevey administration, the State started collecting to tax.  We all know what happens to money when to goes to the black whole of Trenton for redistribution.  Much of it disappears and the intended recipients get shafted.  Think Unemployment Insurance Fund and Transportation Trust Fund. 

Fiore told MMM that the League sued McGreevey to get the money but the State just turned around a reduced State Aid by a commensurate amount.

Fiore, Schneider and the League now want that money back.  It’s not coming, according to what State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff told the APP, “At this time we do not have the financial flexibility to make discretionary adjustment” to provide more from energy taxes.

Fiore told MMM that the energy receipts tax would have provided $4 million dollars to Middletown Township in 2011.  That would have saved the Library surplus the Township relied on, prevented layoffs and cleaned up a few snow storms.

What burns Fiore is not just the $4 million that Middletown didn’t collect from the utilities.  It’s the $1.5 million hit the Township continues to take in reduced State Aid from 2009 levels.  “We wouldn’t be increasing property taxes 1.97% this year if our Aid was restored,” said Fiore, “give us our $1.5 million back and I can reduce taxes by 2%.  The Board of Education got all of their Aid restored, yet they are still raising taxes.”

Schneider told the APP that not receiving the energy receipts tax is costing Long Branch “several million dollars.”

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Mega Millions Up To $640 million

What would you do if you won?

By Art Gallagher

After calling my lawyer and accountant, I’d pay off the mortgages of those who stepped up for me when I needed them too.   Then I’d hire a therapist and spiritual advisor to heal me of the desire to use the rest of it for retribution.   After that, there will be plenty of time to figure it out.

What would you do?

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Jacobson Launches Asbury Park Sun

triCityNews publishers Dan Jacobson has launched a hyper-local news site, The Asbury Park Sun, which will cover local events in Asbury Park, Allenhurst, Interlaken, Loch Arbour, Ocean Grove and Wanamassa.

Molly Mulshine, the very talented Stimulus Girl, has signed on as the site’s editor.

MMM welcomes our friends to Al Gore’s greatest invention and is pleased to be the first to get them listed on google.

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Front Page News?

The big story in yesterday’s Asbury Park Press was the political spat between southern Jersey lawmakers and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg over the proposed Rutgers-Rowan merger.  Large photos of State Senate President Sweeney and Lautenberg covered most of the front page.

In case you haven’t been following, Governor Chris Christie has proposed reorganizing Rutgers, Rowan and the University of Medicine and Dentistry.  Rutgers-Camden would become part of Rowan. Rowan would get a medical school associated with George Norcross Univeristy Cooper University Hospital.  Robert Wood Johnson Hospital would become part of a medical school at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and it will be a while before there are more UMDNJ indictments.

MMM hasn’t been following it all that much.  Our young legal eagle friends at Save Jersey don’t like it because they think it will devalue their law degrees if they apply to a firm that doesn’t know the difference between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark.  And then there’s the two idiots who don’t like the deal…that former Navy SEAL that ran for Assembly who got into it with Christie at a Town Hall meeting and Lautenberg.

If not for the idiot SEAL and the idiot U. S. Senator nobody from New Jersey who isn’t directly affected by the merger would know about it, except for news junkies like us.

Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging the proposed merger is improper and copied U.S. Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Paul “New Jersey is not corrupt” Fishman, thereby implying that the merger is criminal. 

Having already used “idiot” and “numb-nuts” with great fanfare, Christie’s team dubbed Lautenberg’s letter as “outrageous,” “uninformed,” and “bizarre.”

None of that was front page newsworthy.  It took Norcross and Sweeney launching  Sweeney’s 2014 campaign for Launtenberg’s job to make the front page of the APP.

Wednesday morning Sweeney emailed a scathing open letter attacking Lautenberg for opposing the merger and for his failure as a U.S. Senator to bring home Washington money for New Jersey’s higher education institutions.  Several other south Jersey lawmakers, including two Republicans, signed with letter with Sweeney. Norcross later sent a statement calling Lautenberg a “great Senator for north Jersey” who has failed southern New Jersey to the same email list.

The Sweeney/Norcross statements are not really about the Rutger-Rowan merger.  The real message is that Lautenberg’s career is coming to an end.  That message has been confirmed by the silence of Democratic leaders who have staid out of this fight.  U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Assembly Speaker Sheilia Oliver, Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have all been silent.  No one is backing up Lautenberg. 

The message to Lautenberg…prepare for retirement… just don’t quit and let Christie appoint your replacement.  The message to Democratic donors…don’t give to Lautenberg’s 2014 reelection campaign.

So, the point of the last 460 words is that The Asbury Park Press made the 2014 race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate front page news yesterday.  That wouldn’t be so bad if there were not a U.S. Senate election between two relatively unknown candidates, U.S. Senator Bob Mendendez and State Senator Joe Kyrillos this year.

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Autism Prevalence Worsens: 1-in-88 in U.S., 1-in-49 in NJ

WASHINGTON, DC – New alarming data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows 1 in every 88 American children and 1 in every 49 New Jersey children has a form of autism.

            “The national numbers, including and especially in my home state of New Jersey, are shocking,” said U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), author of Combating Autism Reauthorization Act, Public Law 112-32.  “Each one of these statistics represents real children and real families who struggle and need our help and assistance.”

            The study also found a continuing higher prevalence of ASDs in boys than girls (1-in-252 girls and 1-in-54 boys). However, in New Jersey, of the 1 in 49 children with a form of autism, Smith noted a staggering 1 in 29 boys with the disability.

“We as a nation must do much more, especially to determine causation and ensure early diagnosis, so interventional care can begin as early as possible. The stakes are so high: the quality of life of so many children is at risk. We need research, new treatments and a path to a cure.” said Smith, who also authored the provision in Title I of the Children’s Health Act (PL 106-310) which created the Centers of Excellence in Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disabilities Epidemiology that carried out this study.

“Prevention, treatment and ultimately a cure for this developmental disability must be our highest priority.  We need to bring a ‘Manhattan Project’ type focus to this essential life saving work.  Delay is not an option,” Smith said. 

Smith’s landmark legislation enacted in 2000—the Autism Statistics, Surveillance, Research and Epidemiology Act (Title I, P.L. 106-310) created the first comprehensive federal program to combat autism. In 2011, another piece of legislation he authored The Combating Autism Reauthorization Act(CARA)”— (now Public Law 112-32) was enacted and will provide $693 million over the next three years to continue the program.

            “The new CDC data shows a sharp increase from the appalling 2006 data that documented 1-in-110 children with an autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)—a 23 percent increase,” Smith said.

            This morning, Smith , the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Coalition on Autism Research and Education (C.A.R.E.), spoke to Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director of the CDC, about the new data. The information was set to be released at a CDC briefing for Congress Thursday afternoon.

The CDC study, entitled Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, provides autism prevalence estimates from 14 states, including New Jersey. It was published today in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Smith’s law, CARA, signed September 30, 2011 authorized for each of the next three fiscal years: $22 million for the Developmental Disabilities Surveillance and Research Program; $48 million for Autism Education, Early Detection, and Intervention, and; $161 million for hundreds of Research Grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.

In May 2011, Smith chaired a hearing on U.S. and global autism. He also has written two other bills in the current 112th Congress: 1) H.R. 2006, “The National Autism Spectrum Disorders Initiative Act”; and (2) H.R. 2007, “The Autism Spectrum Disorders Services Act.”  Smith’s H.R. 2006 designates the Secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services Department to head the national autism effort, and authorizes the Secretary to approve a strategic plan developed by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), in consultation with the National Institute for Health.  H.R. 2007 establishes a planning and demonstration grant program for services to children, transitioning youth, adults, and individuals of any age who may be at risk of injury, authorizes grants for protection and advocacy systems, and creates a national training initiative to better equip teachers and autism services providers. 

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Name a town in New Jersey that is run by Democrats that is better managed than Middletown

Not Aberdeen.

Moody’s Investors Services downgraded Aberdeen’s $14.9 million in general obligation debt to A1 from Aa3, citing the Township’s seven year trend of balancing its budget by drawing down reserves and relying on one shot gimmicks.

The Township’s cash reserves were down to only $61,392 at the end of 2011.

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Sam Thompson: Judges suing to prevent having to make larger pension and healthcare contributions are making a “totally fallacious” argument

By Senator Samuel D. Thompson

In the case of DePascale vs. State of New Jersey just heard by the New Jersey State Supreme Court, it has been argued that a new law requiring Justices and Superior Court Judges to make larger contributions towards the cost of their healthcare insurance and pensions reduces their salary which is prohibited by the Constitution.

 A section of the State Constitution reads:  “The salary of Supreme Court Justices and Superior Court Judges shall not be diminished during their term of office.”

Increasing the amount these esteemed judicial officials must pay to purchase healthcare insurance and pensions does diminish their purchasing power but does not diminish their salary.

If DePascles’ argument is sustained, then it could similarly be argued in the future that anything which diminishes these officials’ purchasing power (although not affecting their salary) would be in violation of the Constitution and hence, illegal.  Note this section does not bar any diminishment of salary only action by the Sate.

Thus, following DePascales’ logic, should federal, state or local governmental entities increase income or property tax rates or Social Security or Medicare deductions, it would be equally valid to argue these actions would diminish the salary of these officials since such actions would diminish their purchasing power.

In fact, if the Court finds for the plaintiff in the cited case, one might even argue that when the price of gasoline, groceries, utilities or housing increases, it “diminishes their salary” in the same way as increasing the price of purchasing their health insurance and pension did.  Consequently, one would conclude they should never have to pay a higher price for anything they purchase during their term of office.

Clearly, this argument is totally fallacious, was never the intent of the drafters of the constitution or the people that voted for its adoption and should be summarily dismissed.

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