Karin McQuillan, a retired psychotherapist and author who served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, writes at American Thinker that Hillary Rosen’s recent rant that Ann Romey never worked a day he her life is part of the Obama political strategy rooted in the politics of envy. Worse, she says the strategy is deeply rooted in Obama’s psyche as a result of his upbringing.
Closer to home, our friends at InTheLobby have a hilarious account of how Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni turned the table on U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg during the senator’s hearing this week over the fairness of toll increases and patronage at PA.
Turns out that Lautenberg as a former commissioner of the PA he had a free EZ pass for decades and didn’t pay tolls from 1978 through 2006 when the PA stopped issuing free EZ passes to cronies.
Regarding patronage, a former Lautenberg campaign staffer joined PA in 2002, and U.S. Senator Bob Menendez’s son is an intern at PA now.
West Virginia U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller came to Lautenberg’s defense. New Jersey Democrats have been silent, just as they were during Lautenberg’s dust up with State Senate President Steve Sweeney and George Norcross over the Rutgers-Rowan merger earlier this month.
“I’ve never seen a less optimistic time, in my lifetime, in this courtry. And people wonder why. I think it’s really simple. It’s because government’s telling them stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We are turning into a paternalistic entitlement society…”
“….more importantly, there will be more money, more hope, more aspirations, in the hearts of our children and grandchildren than there are today. And that’s what will make the 21st century the second American century. That more than anything else, will allow the United States to export hope, and liberty and freedom around the world. Not by just saying but by living it everyday in the way we conduct ourselves and in the way we govern ourselves.”
~Governor Chris Christie
Chris Christie believes that unrestrained by oppressive and “paternalistic” government, that ordinary people can and will live lives of accomplishment.
Tom Moran, that sanctimonious polyhistor responsible for The Star Ledger’s editorial page, thinks that makes Christie conceded.
The Asbury Park Press editorial board, the Nudniks of Neptune who have fewer orginal thoughts that Joe Biden, agrees with Moran.
Christie made his remarks at a George W. Bush Presidential Center gathering in New York on Tuesday, April 10. Moran posted his rant calling the governor’s message “condescending” early yesterday morning, the 12th. The Nudniks followed yesterday evening calling Christie’s message “hectoring,” “insulting” and “condescending.”
The editorialists of New Jersey’s two largest news outlets must be appalled by Christie’s soaring popularity.
It was the content of Christie’s remarks in between the two phrases I quoted above that got to the liberal regressive pundits. Without naming the president, Christie had the audacity to point out that the Obama agenda has not resulted in hope, but in pessimism. That if it continues we will be financially and morally bankrupt, waiting for the check to show up rather than striving for bigger checks.
Here’s what Christie said, unfiltered by the bias of Moran, the Nudniks or MMM:
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.
The Asbury Park Press editorial board is doing such a good job covering Monmouth and Ocean Counties that they’ve decided to expand their coverage north to Essex County.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker had a sit down with the APP editorial board yesterday. It was a nice interview judging from the write-up; Booker agrees with Governor Christie’s proposed public education reforms. He disagrees with Christie’s restructuring of higher education. He differs with Christie on gay marriage and diet. He thinks the Governor is a good guy. As is usually the case, no news was broken by The Asbury Park Press.
Gannett’s Middlesex/Somerset publication ran the same article and included a video on MyCentralJersey.com
This from Central Jersey’s supposed major news source that didn’t know that a new Monmouth County freeholder was elected in January until they read about it here and on Patch.com.
Monmouth County had 53 mayors. Ocean County has 33. Has the editorial board ever sat down with one of them?
Gannett is apparently surrendering the local news market to the Patches. Maybe as they change their business model they plan to merge all of the New Jersey publications and and put out a statewide edition of USA Today. To bad for them that NJTV already took the name NJ Today.
It’s been a day since Gannett announced that they are going to start charging to read the news on their websites, including app.com, the site of The Asbury Park Press.
APP has yet to report that news. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
Gannett, publisher of The Asbury Park Press and 79 other community newspapers throughout the country, announced today that they will emulate The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal by charging their readers to access their websites, according to multiple news outlets, not includingThe Asbury Park Press.
Readers will be able to read between five and fifteen articles each month before being charged, according to Forbeswho covered the investors conference where Gannett announced the news.
The company also announced that they will shed $1.3 billion in cash, distributing it to shareholders through dividends and a $300 million stock buy back.
As reported here at MMM last November, Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vic Scudiery, 78, is not seeking another term.
Scudiery formalized is retirement last week in a letter to the Democratic County Committee.
Congressman Frank Pallone today expressed his regrets that Scudiery is retiring, telling The Asbury Park Press that “I think Vic was going a good job.”
Pallone joined Jon Corzine in asking Scudiery to resign the chairmanship in 2006. Scudiery refused and was reelected twice since.
This morning The Asbury Park Press argues in an editorial that public labor contracts should be posted online. They argued that municipalites that don’t have websites that can handle such postings should post them on the Department of Community Affairs’ site.
We agree. While we’re at it, why not public notices that municipalities, school boards and private sector zoning and planning applicants now pay millions per year to advertise in newspapers where very few people see them?
During the last legislative session a bi-partisan bill that would have given jurisdictions the option of advertising legal notices in newspapers or online was passed in committee and scheduled for a vote in both houses of the legislature on the last day of the session. It met fierce resistance from the newspaper industry in committee and before that scheduled vote.
The corporate welfare recipients of the newspaper industry argued that politicians would use the choice to punish newspapers who didn’t give them favorable coverage, and that the savings wasn’t that much, if anything. In their final push to kill the bill, which worked, they argued that some towns don’t have websites that could handle the ads.
The legislature’s Democratic leadership, Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver, killed the bill by not letting their chambers vote on it.
Well, thanks to the good nudniks of Neptune, The Asbury Presseditorial board, we now have a solution to the problem of a small number of towns not having websites that can handle posting legal notices. Notice publication could be a shared service hosting by the Department of Community Affairs or by the counties.
Sweeney has already announced that the legal notice bill will not be a priority in the legislative session that just started, signaling to the reformers that support they bill that they shouldn’t bother. Now that The Asbury Park Press has come up with a solution to the newspaper industry’s latest objection, maybe Sweeney will reconsider.
Live Action Video released a tape of a Perth Amboy Planned Parenthood office manager coaching an actor posing as a pimp how to “beat the system” set up to protect underage sex trafficking victims. Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, called the video a hoax and defended Planned Parenthood for alerting the FBI about a potential multistate sex trafficking ring. Amy Woodruff, the Planned Parenthood office manager, was fired. Frank Pallone was silent on the matter. The Asbury Park Press issued an inaccurate editorial defending Planned Parenthood.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the results of the 2010 census. New Jersey lost a congressional district. Hispanics became the state’s largest minority group. New Jersey’s population shifted from the north to the southern and central regions of the state.
New Jersey’s newpaper industry appealed to Trenton Democrats to maintain their corporate welfare in the form of “legal advertising.”
By-laws, and the lack thereof, for the Monmouth GOP became a hot topic for a week or two.
Red Bank Councilman Ed Zipprich likened Congressman Chris Smith and American Catholics opposed to abortion to the Arizona shooter.
Freeholder Deputy Director John Curley called for a public review of Brookdale Community College’s budget and spending after learning of expensive country club memberships and a housing allowance for college President Dr. Peter Burnham. Burnham had drafted a budget that called for a 8.2% tuition increase and blamed the need for the increase on the Freeholder Board reducing the county subsidy for the college.
The Republican Association of Princeton was reconstituted as The Lincoln Club of New Jersey under the leadership of Scott Sipprelle.
Manalapan Mayor Andrew Lucas, Wall Committeeman George Newberry and Spring Lake Councilman Gary Rich launched their campaigns for the GOP nomination for Freeholder.
Is New Jersey the next Delaware? That’s the question Politickernj raised earlier this week regarding the 2012 U.S. Senate race in NJ. Politckernj is wondering if the 2012 U.S. Senate race in New Jersey will be similar to the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Delaware.
The short answer to that question is no. An incumbent was not running in Delaware in 2010. 2012 is a presidential year. 2012 will not be a repeat of 2010. New Jersey is not Delaware. More on that later.
As you might imagine, I have a unique perspective about the differences between New Jersey and Delaware, which is not related to electoral politics. If you’re a reader of this site or The Asbury Park Press, you’re probably aware that I was arrested in my home in Highlands after 10PM on Friday October 14 on a fugitive warrant out of Delaware. I’ve been charged with two felony counts of theft over $100,000 and two misdemeanor counts of forgery. The charges will not be further discussed on this site, other than to say that I am confident of a favorable outcome.
The real reason I was arrested on a fugitive warrant is that the Delaware attorney I had engaged to arrange my surrender in Delaware failed to communicate with the investigating detective in a timely manner. I have a different attorney now.
3 hours vs. 3 weeks
So far the biggest difference between my experiences in New Jersey and Delaware is time. I arrived, as scheduled, to surrender in Delaware this Wednesday at 11am and was on my way home by 2PM. As in Monmouth County, most of that time was spent waiting.
I wasn’t handcuffed, patted down or locked up in Delaware. The actual processing, (being photographed, finger printed and signing some papers) took about 10 minutes. Then my attorney and I hung out until the fugitive warrant was removed from the system. We waited for a Justice of the Peace to finish his lunch and to appear via video for my bail hearing. The video bail hearing took less than five minutes. My bail was set at $12,000.
Technically, I was detained until my family members posted my bail. But I wasn’t really detained. My attorney and I waited in the lobby of the police station for the bail to be posted. I was even allowed to step outside of the building for a smoke, twice.
After about 40 minutes, I signed the bail receipt and was released from my detention in the lobby. It took about a ½ hour to meet up with my family members who had posted my bail. The clock in the car read 1:46 and we were on our way home.
That entire experience is very different than what I experienced in New Jersey.
At about 10PM on Friday October 14 I was arrested at my home in Highlands. I was frisked and handcuffed.
At the Highlands police station I asked to call an attorney. “We’re not questioning you. We’ll let you call your attorney when we know what you can tell him,” was the reply. I was photographed by the arresting officer twice. My belt, shoes, cash, wallet and blackberry were confiscated and I was put into a cell.
A few hours later a sergeant came into the holding area to tell me what was going on. A Monmouth County judge had set my bail at $250,000 with no 10% option. “But there’s really no bail,” he said, “even if you post the $250,000 the fugitive warrant is still in place and you’ll be arrested again.” “Your wife called, we’ll let you call her back in the morning before we transfer you to the county jail.” “What are the charges?” I asked. “Some kind of theft,” was his answer.
I managed to get some sleep on the thin plastic mattress and with the lights on. In the morning an officer sat with me while I called my wife from a police station line that was being recorded. I was given access to my blackberry to read her phone numbers for my attorney, family members and friends that she should call. I sent a text to my attorney.
Then I was transferred to the Monmouth County Correctional Institutionwhere I spent the next three weeks.
$12,000 vs. $250,000 or $150,000
Why my bail was set so high in Monmouth County compared to the bail required in Delaware (where I am not a resident and have no ties to the community) remains a mystery to me.
At my bail reduction hearing in Monmouth County, which occurred after I had already been incarcerated for almost two weeks, the judge who reduced my bail to $150,000 with no 10% option said that such bail would be appropriate for like charges levied in New Jersey.
The Asbury Park Press reported this morning that a former attorney was arrested for stealing over $200,000 from a client. Those charges are somewhat similar to those levied against me. The former attorney’s bail was set at $35,000.
On November 1, The Asbury Park Press reported that a Wall Township attorney and her paralegal were indicted after a three year long investigation for stealing $800,000 from wards whose interests they were assigned to protect. The attorney and the paralegal were each released on $75,000 bail.
In comparison, my bail in Monmouth County seems like an injustice and I realize that I sound like I am complaining. That is not my intention. It is a mystery.
This experience has been incredibly difficult for me, perhaps more so for those who love me. It has been life altering, yet I have faith that in the long run it will be for the good.
Over the next few days or weeks I’ll be writing more about my experience and some of the other differences I have noticed between New Jersey and Delaware.
I’ll get back to writing about the political happenings in Monmouth, the State and the Nation. I’ll be writing about some of the things I missed while was away. I may write about topics other than politics too.
I won’t be writing about the charges against me. Comments about the charges will be removed and those commenters blocked. There are other sites that will accommodate my naysayers.
I am happy to be back.
I am extremely grateful to the many, many people who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to those who have been supportive since my release two weeks ago. In times of crisis like the one I have faced, you quickly learn who your friends are.
