Assembly candidate Shane Robinson and LG Kim Guadagno. That's a light fixture over Guadagno's head. She's not wearing a crown.
By Shane Robinson
Yesterday, Fitch downgraded New Jersey’s credit rating from AA to AA-. The reasons they cited were unfunded pension and benefit liabilities, a structurally imbalanced state budget, and reserve balances that “are expected to remain narrow, offering limited flexibility to absorb unforeseen needs.”This is just the most recent example of how New Jersey cannot afford to continue electing politicians like John Wisniewski any longer. Mr. Wisniewski and his colleagues have been standing in the way of important reforms that would help get our state back on a sound financial footing. His tax and spend policies have bankrupted our state, and have made New Jersey an increasingly unaffordable state to live in. People are leaving New Jersey in droves, because of the cost of living, lack of jobs, and the unwillingness of certain Trenton politicians to take the necessary steps to fix what ails our state.
It has become very clear that John Wisniewski doesn’t have the right solutions for New Jersey. Maybe he’s too busy with his job as state Democrat Party Chairman to see how much New Jersey working families are struggling or to come up with anything that puts New Jerseyans back to work. We need leaders who are going to fight every day for an affordable state. We need leaders who understand that in order to help New Jersey’s families, we have to keep their taxes low, stop spending money we don’t have, and make it easier for businesses to operate and stay in New Jersey.
It’s time for some new blood in Trenton. John Wisniewski represents the old tax, spend, and tax again policies that have failed our state and caused our credit rating to be downgraded. I’m running for the New Jersey State Assembly because I understand what New Jerseyans have been going through, and will fight to make New Jersey affordable again.
Shane Robinson is a GOP candidate for Assembly from the 19th Legislative District.
By Dan Jacobson, also published in the August 18 edition of the triCityNews
When you’re running for office in America, there’s the inevitable question about the seriousness of your campaign:
How much money are you going to raise?
People are now starting to ask that about me. Because I’m running for the state Assembly as an Independent. And I’ve been getting lots of attention lately by bluntly stating my positions in this space. Exactly as I’ve always done as Publisher of the triCityNews.
In fact, serving as an Assemblyman would be an extension of my work as a journalist. It would provide another platform for my advocacy at the state level. But most rewarding would be how I’d hold the office – with complete independence to say and do what I want. I’d owe no one. And I completely reject politics as we know it today.
Yeah, I admit it. I have some big ambitions here. I want to break the mold of politics in this state.
And that starts with my campaign.
Of course, I’d love to do the actual work of an Assemblyman. But I’m certainly not obsessed with getting elected. And that obsession is what I can’t stand about politicians. I can’t even listen to candidates anymore. It’s too infuriating. In fact, politics today is downright cheesy. I think it’s demeaning to those running. It’s actually embarrassing to watch.
So whether it’s glad-handing at political events, handing out the same old campaign literature, mouthing the typical bullshit or getting caught up in the money chase – I’m rejecting it all. Yup, I won’t do it. And I don’t give a shit. If that’s the only way to win, then I don’t win. No problem. I don’t want the office any other way. I don’t want to be a cheesy politician.
Which brings me back to fundraising.
“Dan will wake some people up,” said powerful Republican blogger Art Gallagher on his More Monmouth Musings blog about my candidacy recently. “But unless he raises and spends some serious money, he will not be a factor.”
Art may indeed be right. The major party candidates, backed by their state party organizations, have been known to spend over $1 million in hotly contested legislative districts. Of course, everyone knows what that money represents – and where it comes from. It’s gross. I know firsthand. I was in such a race 20 years ago in my late 20s when I won one term in the state Assembly. Never again. It’s disgusting.
Look, I’ve stated flat-out that I don’t expect to win. No Independent in New Jersey has won an Assembly seat in 50 years. So the odds are overwhelmingly against me. And conventional wisdom says that you’ve got to raise serious money to be a serious candidate.
Then again, I’m not a conventional guy, and I’ve always rejected conventional thought. I make my own judgments. And I would not run if I didn’t at least think I could win. It is possible.
This is a five candidate race featuring two Republicans, two Democrats and me. We are competing for the two Assembly seats in the 11th District. Voters can vote for up to two candidates. I may get only 10 percent of the vote. Or I may win by 10 votes. Maybe I’ll lose by 10 votes. Perhaps I’ll come in first by 1,000 votes.
I really don’t care. That’s the liberating part. I know exactly how I want to run this campaign. And I know exactly how I’d serve if elected. That’s all set in stone. There’s no deviating from it.
That means winning or losing is out of my hands. As it should be – because I won’t change who I am or what I say to affect the outcome. Got no interest in doing so. That’s why this campaign may have a special resonance with voters if they pick up on it.
My beliefs are united by one thing – a knee-jerk reaction against the concentration of power, wherever it may be found. That includes government employee unions who use mandatory dues to elect those sitting across the bargaining table. That includes powerful corporations that get government favors instead of competing in the free market. It also includes big media – my disgust with the Gannett-owned Asbury Park Press is well-documented. And it includes political parties who order elected officials what to do. I recoil against it all.
As for social issues, I’m pro-choice and in favor of same sex marriage. Government should not be involved in such private matters.
By the way, there will be some money spent on this campaign. I’m not disclosing how much. That will eventually be on the campaign finance reports. But it will certainly not be considered “serious money”. Yup, I want to be that cheap. I’ll owe no one.
Keep in mind, however, that there are two things I know quite well: Communications and politics. In the end, I say my unconventional campaign – run purposely on the cheap – will have as much punch as a conventional one spending $100,000.
Still, is that enough for an Independent to win? Probably not. But it’s not impossible.
So why do this at all?
Here’s my motivation: It would be tremendously satisfying to win this campaign by saying exactly what I think. Literally not changing one word. I’ve never seen that done before. What an accomplishment that would be!
That, in turn, would lead to the most professionally rewarding experience possible in government: Holding an elected office without owing anyone. After running a campaign where you told voters the truth.
That’s the fantasy of all decent people who’d like to serve in public office. And that’s the only way I’m willing to do it.
(The 11th District where I’m running includes: Asbury Park, Long Branch, Red Bank, Ocean Township, Neptune, Neptune City, Interlaken, Deal, Allenhurst, Loch Arbour, West Long Branch, Eatontown, Shrewsbury Borough, Shrewsbury Township, Tinton Falls, Colts Neck, Freehold Township and Freehold Borough.)
Editors note: All candidates for any office are welcome to submit material to MMM. You don’t even have to be a candidate for office to submit. As long as I think your stuff will be of interest to my readers, I’ll probably publish it, unless it needs more than 30 seconds worth of editing. If your stuff needs lots of editing, I probably won’t open your second email.
If you quote me and stroke my ego, your chances of publication are very good. Send to Artvg at aol dot com.
It has been said that democracy operates much the same way as a circular raft, with all participants rowing in a different direction. Washington’s handling of the latest budget crisis is proof positive of this. The solution that was ultimately arrived at seeks to solve the crushing national debt by, paradoxically, increasing the national debt, with some vague, non-binding promise to study yet-to-be-identified cuts somewhere down the road. In other words, our “leaders” punted.
But because liberals did not get their way and failed to secure tax hikes and military cuts, the headlines that followed often bemoaned the supposed newfound lack of cooperation in Washington. “Congress’ Failure to Compromise Undermines Framers’ Design”, declared the Newark Star Ledger. The headline of a similar story warned “Political Dysfunction, Factionalization Threaten Our Republic.”
Of course, when Obamacare was rammed down the nation’s throat despite uniform opposition from the right, with all 178 House Republicans voting against it, and all 39 Senate Republicans voting against it, and the public opposing it by about 53 to 36%, nobody on the left complained about the Democrats’ lack of bi-partisanship. Nobody on the left called for liberals to compromise with Republicans. In fact, the only bi-partisanship was the bi-partisan effort to defeat the bill, as 34 Democrats joined with Republicans to vote against it.
But now that there is actually an opposition party in Washington — by which I mean the Tea Party, not the historically pusillanimous Republican Party — all of a sudden government doesn’t work, and our founders are rolling over in their graves, and the very foundation of our republic is being threatened.
Good grief.
The problem in America is not that the framers did not envision factionalism. The framers were acutely aware of factionalism, realizing as they did that America would be a geographically, demographically, and culturally diverse nation, which is precisely why they created a federalist system with a large degree of state autonomy. They understood that Americans could live best together if our legal systems were largely kept apart. What the framer’s did not envision was the loss of federalism, and the nearly outright eradication of state sovereignty in favor of a giant, overreaching federal government, collapsing under its own weight, that forces dissimilar people to find often non-existent middle ground on the issues that matter the most to them.
If anything is causing the founding fathers to roll over in their graves, it would be our President grumbling that he has not been endowed with the powers of an autocrat. In just the last few weeks, President Obama has lamented, with an arrogance unseen since Napoleon, that it “would be easier if [he] could do this on [his] own,” even though nobody contributed less in terms of ideas to the budget debate than did he. He has complained of having to deal with our “messy democracy.” He even admitted in a speech to La Raza, the taxpayer funded illegal alien anarchy group, that “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting,” and his effete press secretary whined that it’s “Unfortunate we don’t control all levers of government.”
Actually, what’s unfortunate is that for two years Obama did control all levers of government, and instead of creating jobs, or reducing the deficit, or, heaven forbid, reigning in spending, he focused on his vainglorious Obamacare, which will destroy jobs, raise the deficit, and is perhaps the greatest power-grab overreach since FDR’s “Pack the Court” plan.
Getting back, it’s true, of course, that if not for the Tea Party, the recent budget negotiations would have gone more smoothly. And so what? The negotiations would have gone smoothly because there would have been an obvious lack of responsible lawmakers demanding a government that operates within its means. It was the Tea Party Republicans — who, by the way, just won the most recent election with a landslide the magnitude of which had not been seen since before World War II — who demanded spending cuts and an end to irresponsible borrowing, even in the face of opposition from within the Republican Party. The Tea Party Republicans did precisely what they promised voters, and it was not to compromise, it was to stand their ground against an ever expanding, fiscally irresponsible, out-of-control government.
Yet, now that they’re doing exactly that, the left tells us that Americans want compromise. Nonsense. People want things their own way. The only time anyone wants to compromise is when they’re losing.
Besides, certain issues simply do not have a compromise position. There is no compromise position between larger and smaller government. There is no compromise between more and less spending. There is no compromise between higher and lower taxes. There is no compromise between war and peace. There is no compromise between legalized abortion and the outlawing of abortion.
Compromise is good for passing legislation, but that doesn’t mean the legislation passed is itself any good. In fact, it almost always means the legislation is less than ideal. Remember that by definition, to compromise something is, literally, to weaken it. If an army’s defenses are compromised, it means the soldiers are vulnerable. If a ship’s hull is compromised, that means it’s sinking. When a government compromises its laws, the result is no different.
Still, there has become a generally accepted narrative that our political spectrum has two crazy extremes, with sanity residing soundly in the middle. Moderation has become synonymous with virtue. While moderation undoubtedly has merit when it comes to, say, alcohol consumption, it does not always follow politically. Sometimes, indeed, oftentimes, the right idea is on one side of the spectrum, with the intermediate position simply being less wrong than one extreme, but also less than right when measured against the other. This is problematic not just because it creates a flawed law, but also an entropic, downward spiral of increasingly worse laws. Think about it. Take pure water and compromise it with unclean water. That water is less clean than before. Then take that new bowl of water, and compromise it again. Every time the water is compromised it becomes dirtier. It’s no different in the law. Take a good law and compromise it, it becomes flawed. Compromise it again and it becomes inadequate. Continue to compromise, and before you know it all you’ve done is spend a lot of money on ideas that did not work.
Make no mistake about it: our budget crisis is the result of generations of unchallenged compromises.
There is a time for compromise, yes, but for the most part, ours is not a system of compromise, but of majority rule. And that’s more the reason that the most important issues should not be the province of the federal government, but should be left to the states and local communities, where people have more direct access to their government, and cultural, demographic, and geographical differences are kept to a minimum. A one-size-fits-all government fits nobody.
When it comes to the pressing issues that are invariably national in scope, we need leaders who will take a principled stand against the left, who will resist at all costs bigger government and more spending, who will defend capitalism against the command economy, and who will draw a line in the sand and declare that government has come this far but it will come no farther. That is the only way America will remain solvent, to say nothing of prosperous. There simply is no middle road. To compromise with the left is simply to move slowly in their direction, down the path to insolvency and the destruction of capitalism.
And so it is that divided we will stand. United we’ll fall.
Jordan Rickards is a Middlesex County based attorney and the publisher of The Rickards Review, which he bills as “The Internet’s Preeminent Conservative Blog.” (MMM readers know better). Jordan is the Republican nominee for State Senate for New Jersey’s 17th Legislative District.
Throughout the spring and summer the conventional wisdom has been that the Monmouth GOP will not face serious challenges in legislative and county races of 2011. 2011 is supposed to be a “good Republican year.”
It still could turn out that way. Probably will. But MMM has learned that the Democrats think they have unexpected opportunities.
On the legislative level, the Trenton Democratic machine has taken interest in the new 11th district.
Back in April after the new legislative map was released the Democrats were scrambling to field a slate of candidates. No Democratic elected officials would challenge Republican incumbents Senator Jennifer Beck or Assemblywomen Caroline Casagrande and Mary Pat Angelini. Now the Democrats think the 11th is in play and will dedicate financial and human resources to elect Ray Santiago to the Senate and Marilyn Schlossbach and Vin Gopal to the Assembly.
Both sides fear that Independent Assembly candidate Dan Jacobson will draw votes away from them and could end up being a spoiler. In his column in last week’s triCityNews, Jacobson said that he expected to take votes from both sides and that he would need 20% of the voters to cast an uninformed protest vote for him in order to win a seat. Jacobson said he expects Beck, Casagrande and Angelini to prevail in November.
On the county level, the Democrats are planning a character assassination on Freeholder Lillian Burry. They will allege conflicts of interest on Burry’s part going back to her tenure as Mayor of Colts Neck and continuing in Freehold.
The once mighty New Jersey Education Association announced their endorsements for the upcoming legislative elections over the weekend. All 120 seats in the State Legislature are up for grabs this November. 40 Senate seats and 80 Assembly seats. The NJEA only endorsed 68 candidates. 66 Democrats and 2 Republicans.
In many districts the teachers’ union did not endorse for all three offices, 1 Senator and 2 Assembly Members. In 11 out of 40 districts they announced they were not endorsing any candidate.
But in the 13th legislative district their endorsements are “pending screening.”
The new 13th is comprised of northeastern Monmouth County; the bayshore towns from Aberdeen east to Highlands, the Two River towns of Rumson, Fair Haven, Little Silver and Oceanport, and the coastal towns of Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach, and Marlboro.
No one would expect the NJEA to endorse the Republicans, Senator Joe Kyrillos, Assemblywoman Amy Handlin and Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon. Why wouldn’t the Democrats screen? If the the screening in “pending” as the NJEA says, why didn’t the 13th district Democrats screen before the rest of the endorsements were announced?
NJEA endorsements come with lots of money and organizational support. Pending the pending screening and the pending endorsement or lack thereof, the LD 13 Democrats are raising money and support with a comedy night next week in Keasnburg.
I imagine the night going like this:
Funny Master of Ceremonies: “Thank you all for coming out tonight. We’re here to help Chris Cullen defeat Joe Kyrillos and to help Kevin Laven and Patrick Short defeat Amy Handlin and Declan O’Scanlon.”
The 11th district Democratic team of Ray Santiago for Senate, Marilyn Schlossbach and Vin Gopal for Assembly are planning on making marriage equality a key plank of their general election platform.
According to the “Our Plan” page on their website, the candidates “strongly support” full marriage equality for all Americans. They also plan to create more jobs in the 11th district and protect the shoreline by opposing off shore drilling and working with Clean Ocean Action.
Senate President Steve Sweeney called the upper house into session today…it can’t honestly be said that he called it “to order”…to vote on 15 of Governor Christie’s 39 line item vetoes in the State Budget.
There was grand standing, name calling, yelling and screaming, but in the end all of the override votes failed, just as everyone knew they would before the show started. Only Senator Jennifer Beck broke partisan ranks to vote with the Democrats to increase Planned Parenthood funding by $7.5 million. The measure still failed.
Tomorrow the Senate will repeat the process.
Nothing real will happen until Governor Christie returns from vacation on Friday.
Senate President Steve Sweeney told The Star LedgerEditorial Board that he is groveling to get back into the good graces of the NJEA. He didn’t put it exactly that way, but that is the effect of his pronouncement that he will not allow two key components of Governor Christie’s educations reforms…merit pay and ending seniority protections from layoffs.
Governor Christie gave himself plenty of room to negotiate when he increased the budget surplus by $270 million while cutting transitional aid to the cities by $139 million. The Democrats want that money, and other monies that Christie cut back. If the cities don’t get the money they could face bankruptcy.
Christie shouldn’t give an dime back to the cities unless he gets everything he wants in education reform. If Sweeney and the Democrats don’t go along because they’re trying to get back into the good graces of the NJEA, let the voters decide.
Let’s have the coming election, in which the entire legislature is up for grabs, be a referendum on Christie’s agenda vs the NJEA agenda.
Assembly Republicans Caroline Casagrande, R-Monmouth and Mercer; Nancy F. Muñoz, R-Union, Essex, Morris and Somerset; Mary Pat Angelini, R-Monmouth; DiAnne Gove, R-Ocean, Amy H. Handlin, R-Monmouth and Middlesex; and Denise Coyle, R-Somerset and Morris, issued the following statement about the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget that fully funds healthcare to low-income and uninsured women through Federally Qualified Health Centers:
“Protecting women’s healthcare, not political agendas, is our primary concern and we are thrilled that New Jersey will fully fund vital health services for women, and their children, through clinics that provide legitimate healthcare.
“Uninsured and low-income women will continue to have access to comprehensive healthcare services in all 21 counties. It is important to note that funding of these vital services has increased by $30 million over the past two years.
“We have proven that it is possible to have a responsible, legal and balanced budget while continuing to fund healthcare programs that are crucial to women and children.”
Senate President Steve Sweeney’s line of bull nearly cost him his life today as a lightning stike just missed him during an on camera interview with the Philadelphia Fox-TV affiliate.
Sweeney’s been lying all week. Not just about the budget and the Governor’s prick. I invited him onto the LaRossa and Gallagher “Real Jersey Guys” Radio Show to talk about the State budget and his now famous remarks to Tom Moran about the Governor. Rather than turn us down because we would challenge him, Sweeney’s spokesman Chris Donnelly said the Senate President was booked all week and suggestted we try at another time. Since then Sweeney’s been a rotten media whore.
That’s ok, former Senator Dick LaRossa and I did fine without him. Here’s a recording of the show:
