Mulshine: It’s Guadagno’s fault if his cat poops on the rug

By Art Gallagher

Paul Mulshine says he will blame Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno if his cat poops on the rug.  Really, he said that.

Mulshine’s cat usually poops outdoors, but the usual spot, probably on a neighbor’s property, is snow covered and the pussy won’t go where it usually goes.  Mulshine wasn’t prepared for the storm.  He couldn’t navigate the snow covered roads to get kitty litter so his pussy would have a warm place to do it.

Guadagno is at fault because she’s on vacation out of state at the same time Governor Christie is out of state, leaving Senate President Steve Sweeney in charge as Acting Governor.

Mulshine speculates that Guadagno vacationing at the same time as Christie could be the end of her political career.  He quotes Rick Shaftan as saying that “nothing will screw up your poll numbers more than snow.”  Shaftan, who is famous for talking to Mulshine and for running Steve Lonegan’s 2009 gubernatorial primary, noted that former New York Mayor John Lindsay lost the 1969 GOP primary due to mishandling a snow storm.  Lindsay was reelected on a third party line. 

If Shaftan, Lonegan, Mulshine and the ideologues were in charge of the NJ GOP, like they want to be, a third party candidate could get elected in New Jersey too.

Mulshine and Shaftan speculate that Guadagno wants the GOP nomination to run against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez in 2012.  Yet another example of ideologues who can’t count. 

If the NJ GOP mounts a top tier talent challenge to Menendez in 2012 we’re in deep trouble as a nation.  Barack Obama will be on the top of the Democratic ticket in 2012.  The only way a Republican is going to win a state wide race in 2012 is if Obama is unelectable in New Jersey.  If that is the political environment in 2012 the economy will be in worse shape than it is now.  Obama’s poll numbers are over 50% in NJ now, as bad as things are.

Mulshine and Shaftan have a strange bedfellow in windbag Senator Ray Lesniak who called in from Florida to criticise Guadagno and Christie for leaving Sweeney in charge of cleaning up the snow.

Sweeney assured Christie he wouldn’t create mischief while keeping the Governor’s seat warm.  If Christie didn’t trust Sweeney to keep his word, other arrangements would have been made.  If Sweeney breaks his word, other arrangements will be made in the future.  

The constitutional purpose of the Lt. Governor’s office is to prevent one person from controlling two-thirds of the state government, as was the case when Dick Codey was Governor and Senate President after Jim McGreevey’s resignation and when Don DiFrancesco held both offices after Christine Whitman’s resignation.  The current banter is nonsense.

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They’re baaacccckk

On MTV starting January 6th.

I bet if NJN produced a knockoff staring New Jerseyeans rather than New Yorkers that people would watch it and they could sell enough ads to cover their budget.

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Musings on the future of NJN

By Art Gallagher

That NJN will survive is good for New Jersey, and not just because I’ve been a guest on one of the station’s best shows.

NJN has been given a reprieve from going dark on January 1 because people like it.   Tens of thousands of people like, “not hundreds of thousands,” as News Director Michael Aron told Politickernj.  

What those tens of thousands of people like, and what is important to New Jersey, is the station’s news coverage. In particular its coverage of state government and politics.  NJN was not given a reprieve because of reruns from the 60’s and 70’s of Christmas with the King Family or Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air.   If only tens of thousands of people like the station’s news coverage, how many are tuning in for 3 Steps to Piano Success?

Legislation that Governor Christie recently approved empowers the NJ Public Broadcasting Authority to work to transfer NJN from a government entity to the control of a non-profit organization or an existing public broadcasting entity.

Why not a for profit Jersey-centric commercial station with Jersey news and programing?   If HBO (The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire) and MTV (Jersey Shore) can get millions of viewers with Jersey-centric programing, a real Jersey TV station should be able to get the hundreds of thousands that Aron aspires to have.

I realize that that creates red tape and regulatory hurdles with the FCC, but it should be doable. 

Aron tells me the annual barebones budget for NJN is about $20 million, which includes “in-kind” contributions from the State for rent and other overhead items.   A good Jersey TV station should be able to sell a lot more that $20 million in advertising.  Expand the “sponsorships” to more that PSEG and the NJEA.

If we can sell advertising on our school busses, we ought to be able to sell advertising on our TV station.

Let’s find a way to make it happen and have more Jersey news, entertainment and sports.

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Grading the Governor

By Art Gallagher

Tom Moran is the editorial page editor of the Star Ledger and the reporter who unwittingly made Governor Chris Christie a YouTube sensation.

Moran decided that its time to grade the Governor.  In a column published on Sunday, the pernicious pundit acknowledges that independent polls indicate that the voters are rating the Governor with A’s and B’s. He spends the rest of the column telling the voters (us) why they (we) are wrong about Christie. Moran say Christie only gets a C.

It’s a good thing that New Jersey pays little heed to Moran. If we did, Chris Daggett would be Governor and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver would be taken seriously.

Moran gives Christie high marks for courage, calling the Governor a cage fighter for his cause.  Despite this A, Moran gives Christie demerits for failing to compromise.  This has been a theme of Moran’s throughout the year. Christie came to Trenton promising to turn the place upside down.  Moran wants him to be nice while breaking the furniture.

Moran even gives the Governor a B on the budget, even though he calls Christie’s claim that he plugged an $11 billion budget hole “farcical.”

On the 2% property tax cap, Moran says Christie will earn a spot on the honor roll if it works, but so far it hasn’t. Duh. It hasn’t even gone into effect yet, and the “tool kit” negotiations with the Democratic legislative leadership are ongoing. Moran criticises Christie for not caving and accepting Oliver’s and Senate President Steve Sweeney’s first offer.

Moran takes Christie to task for calling Oliver a liar over her assertion that she tried to meet with Christie over the “tool kit.”

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver was shocked when she learned that the governor had accused her of lying.

“That has irreparably affected my ability to work with this governor,” she says. “For him to cast aspersions on my integrity and say I would lie? That did it. That showed me I really cannot have a trusting relationship with this governor. Because he will distort the truth. He will stand up and lie.

“It was a game changer for me, a total game changer.”

Will Oliver’s resignation as Speaker be forthcoming?  If she can’t or won’t work with the Governor she has no business being Speaker.   Oliver should be grateful that the Governor and most of the media gave her (and Moran) a pass when she called the Governor racist in an earlier Moran column.

Moran seems to think it is a problem for Christie that Oliver and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg “hate his guts.” 

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg felt this sting as well. After he criticized the governor for killing the Hudson River tunnel project, the governor lashed out.

“All he knows how to do is blow hot air,” Christie said. “So I don’t really care what Frank Lautenberg has to say about much of anything.”

This is the downside of the governor’s straight talk. He has to work with Oliver and Lautenberg, like it or not. And now they both seem to hate his guts.

“Look, I worked with Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, and had no problems,” Lautenberg says. “This is really unusual. There’s been hardly any communication from his office, and I’m on the Appropriations Committee. I put my heart and soul into this, and to have someone calling me names and trying to shame me? It’s incomprehensible.”

Lautenberg is old and has been very sick for most of the year. He can be forgiven for not noticing that Christie is not Tom Kean or Christie Whitman.  Now that he’s woken up, he’ll start comprehending, if his heart and soul are really in his job.  How effective has he been for us on the Appropriations Committee anyway?

Moran is right about one thing.  Christie hasn’t delivered yet.  But that is not the measure by which to grade a Governor 11 months into his term.  Moran is a liberal ideologue masquerading as a moderate.  Like ideologues on the right who are critical of Christie because he hasn’t fixed all the inequities of New Jersey government in 11 months, he is driven only by his own narrow agenda.

The NJEA is having a news conference in Trenton today to propose education reforms including “significant reform of the tenure system.”   That is remarkable.  Even if the proposed reforms are full of loop holes, which as a Jersey cynic I suspect they will be, the fact that the NJEA has entered the reform conversation is truly remarkable.  Chris Christie made that happen.

Civil Service and binding arbitration is going to be reformed.  Mayors and councils are going to be unbound from the ties that have driven property taxes to catastrophic levels and be empowered to truly manage their communities rather than rubber stamp state mandates. That is unbelievable. Chris Christie made that happen.

The 2% property tax cap, even with its exceptions, will truly force a reduction in the size of government, especially when inflation kicks in. Share services will become a reality out of necessity, rather than something community leaders pay lip service to during elections.

Chris Christie has changed the tone and transformed the direction of government in New Jersey. “Changed has arrived” he declared in his inaugural address.  He is deliverying change.  Trenton is not quite upside down yet, but it is surely tilted.  He can’t be graded by the old score card, because he has changed the game in New Jersey and given Governors throughout the nation, and our leaders in Washington new rules.

Rather than a report card, lets judge Christie with a scorecard.

Christie is leading by a wide margin as the first quarter of his term comes to a close.  Yet, the opposition of special interests and trough swillers have been studying the films and making adjustments.  The final minutes of the quarter are critical as the effectiveness of the tool kit will be determined.  Next year, the second quarter, is when the real heavy lifitng will start. Legislative redistricting, the budget and the legislative election will dominate the agenda.  Municipal budgets drawn under the 2% cap will dominate the news.  As the economy improves, if it does, “we don’t have the money” will not work as well in forcing reforms.

Christie gets an A for his first year.  Next year will be the real test.  Mid-terms will be in November.  If the voters give Christie and A or B in the form of a Republican legislature, we’ll find out what “turning Trenton upside down” really means.

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NJN will remain on the air

Governor Chris Christie told the Star Ledger that NJN, New Jersey public television and radio stations, will remain on the air after January 1st if legislation that allows negotiations with a private entity to take over the station is passed before the end of the year.   Senate President Steve Sweeney, (Reagan Democrat) has a bill before the legislature that would create a bi-partisan commission to manage the transfer to a private entity.  Senator Joe Kyrillos has proposed a bill that would empower the State Treasurer to manage the transfer.

State funding for the network is scheduled to expire on December 31. Layoff notices went out to the station’s 130 employees last month.

Michael Aron, the station’s senior political correspondent, told MMM that the network’s annual budget is roughly $20 million, including $7 million in in-kind contributions from the State for rent on its facilities and other fixed assets. The cash contribution from the State coffers was $4 million in 2010.

Christie’s original plan under the current state budget was for NJN’s licenses to be sold or transfered to a private entity.  Officials now want the state to retain ownership of the license and enter into a management agreement with a consortium of broadcasters to provide content, according to the Star Ledger report.

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The Reviews Are In!

My family and friends think my appearance on NJN’s Reporters Roundtable with Michael Aron was wonderful.

My brother emailed me that his wife said I looked good.  I responded, “No wonder you love her, she is very generous!”  “Yes, she is,” was his reply.

The final broadcast of the first “Bloggers Roundtable” featuring yours truly, Murray Sabrin, and BlueJersey’s Jay Lassiter and Jeff Gardner is at 10AM this morning.  NJN is channel 23 on Comcast in Monmouth County.  Check your local listings if you have a different TV provider.

If you miss the broadcast you can view the video here.

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NJN’S “BLOGGER’S” ROUNDTABLE WITH MICHAEL ARON

By Art Gallagher

I was privileged to join Murray Sabrin along with BlueJersey’s Jay Lassiter and Jeff Gardner as panelists on Michael Aron’s Reporters Roundtable on NJN.

The video is just under 27 minutes long.  The show will be broadcast on television Friday evening at 7PM and Sunday at 10am.

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Bloggers Featured on NJN

On the left, Jay Lassiter and Jeff Gardner of BlueJersey.com. Michael Aron of NJN, seated center. On the right, Art Gallagher and Murray Sabrin of MurraySabrin.com

NJN’s Reporters Roundtable will be a bloggers roundtable this week.

I was privileged to join BlueJersey’s Jay Lassiter and Jeff Gardner, along with Murray Sabrin for the taping on Michael Aron’s weekly show this afternoon at NJN’s studio in Trenton.

The half hour show will air Friday evening at 7PM and Sunday morning at 10AM and be posted on NJN’s website on Monday the 29th.

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Margolin Leaving Star Ledger

Politickernj is reporting that Star Ledger reporter Josh Margolin is leaving the New Jersey press corp to join the NY Post.

New Jersey journalism will be weaker without the Pulitzer Prize winning Margolin in the beat.  Hopefully Kevin Penton will step up his game.

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