Neptune Nudniks Endorse Falsetto Frankie

In honor of the Soprano State MoreMonmouthMusings hereby adds Falsetto Frankie to Phoney Palloney as our favorite nicknames for the congressman from New Jersey’s sixth district.

In the most telegraphed endorsement since The New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for President, the Asbury Park Press endorsed Falsetto Frankie for another term in Washington this morning.   The endorsement found its way to the Nudniks’ website.  Their endorsement of Shaun Golden for Monmouth County Sheriff, which appeared in yesterday’s print edition, has yet to make its way to app.com.

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The Asbury Park Press Finally Reports On Pallone’s Pay To Play Scam

Not surprisingly, The Neptune Nudniks let Pallone spin the stroy

By Art Gallagher

The Asbury Park Press has finally reported Congressman Frank Pallone’s interference with the Food and Drug Administration on behalf of a campaign donor.

After receiving campaign contributions from ReGen Biologics, a Hackensack based medical device manufacturer, and its executives in 2008, Pallone, Congressman Steven Rothman and Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menedez , the four legislators pressured the FDA into approving ReGen’s Menaflex knee patch. Menaflex had previously been rejected twice.  This week the FDA reversed the decision and announced it was rescinding the approval.

Pallone told the Asbury Park Press that what he did was routine, what he would do for any constituent. 

ReGen is in Hackensack which is not in the 6th congressional district.  ReGen CEO Gerald Bisbee, who along with his wife Linda contributed $32,000 of the over $50,000 contributed to the legislators and the Democratic party, lives in Connecticut.  John Dichiara, the company’s government affairs director, wrote checks for $20,800.  He lives in New York.

Pallone told the APP that he has three staffers who help residents who are having trouble with government red tape.

Maureen Nevin of Asbury Park has not had as much “routine” help from Pallone.  She hasn’t made any campaign contributions, according to campaignmoney.com

Patrick Donohue hasn’t given any money to Pallone either. Maybe that is why Frank won’t release  H. Con Res. 198, a resolution recognizing Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury as the leading cause of death and disability in the United States for children and young adults from birth until 25 years of age and endorsing the National Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury Plan, from the committee he chairs.

Pallone told the APP that the FDA has mismanaged the project from the beginning. He said that the product is approved in Europe and that, “This is a product that could have helped people. It could have saved people a lot of pain.”

That’s not what Pallone was saying in May of 2009.  He, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak signed a 16 page letter to the FDA raising questions about the ReGen Menaflex approval and asking them to review it.   That hardly seems routine.  I guess the APP fact checkers missed that.

During his Red Bank town hall meeting in August of 2009, Pallone said “Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman are the two finest people I know in Washington.”

Let’s summarize what we know of Pallone’s involvement with ReGen and the FDA so far.

1) In 2008 Pallone received campaign contributions from ReGen executives and then he joined his NJ colleagues Rothman, Lautenberg and Menedez in applying pressue to the FDA to approve the ReGen product.

2) In 2009, Pallone reversed course.  He joined Waxman, “one of the finest people he knows in Washington” in raising questions about the ReGen product’s approval and asking the FDA to review it.  He did so in a 16 page letter with a signature larger than John Hancock’s.

3) In 2010, while in the midst of the tightest election he has ever faced in his career, Pallone flips again. He tells the Asbury Park Press that what he did was routine, like what he would do for anybody.  He said the FDA mismanaged the process from the beginning and that the product could help a lot of people.

THAT’S WHY WE CALL HIM PHONEY PALLONEY!

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Breaking News From the Asbury Park Press:

Whales and sharks eat otters in Alaska.  Feds spend $15million to find that out.

Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates have a debate.

Gay male actors have twins 

Morris County man takes plea deal in attempted squirrel drowning.

Still no reporting on Frank Pallone’s influence peddling scheme gone bad.

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I wonder if the APP Editorial Board reads Bob Ingle

The Asbury Park Press has yet another ill-informed editorial this morning, Christie off the rails on tunnell.

Gov. Chris Christie’s announcement Thursday that he was pulling the plug on a new Hudson River rail tunnel that had been more than a decade in the planning stages was his latest in a line of “my way or the highway” decrees.

It is a pattern that is increasingly jeopardizing New Jersey’s ability to work collaboratively with others — its neighbors, public employee unions and members of the opposite political party — to address the short- and long-term challenges facing the state.

If New Jersey wanted a governor to work collaboratively with our neighbors, public employee unions and Democrats, the crew that got us into the fiscal mess we are in, we would have reelected Jon Corzine. Yes, even our neighbors, Pennsylvania and New York who, until Christie came along, have been fleecing New Jersey with glee.

Had the Nudniks of Neptune bothered to read their own columnist, Bob Ingle, since before former Governor Corzine broke ground on the ARC tunnel they would know that the project is an ill-concieved boondoggle that does not connect to New York’s major transportation hubs and that New Jersey taxpayers are bearing the lions share of the costs, while New York is not contributing a penny.

Christie killed the project because New Jersey taxpayers could be on the hook for between $2 and $6 billion dollars in cost overruns, in addition to the $3 billion, plus our share of the Port Authority’s contribution, that we are already on the hook for.   U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LeHood appealed to Christie for time to review options to reinstate the project.  Christie gave him two weeks.  I’m looking forward to the Neptune Nudnik’s editorial after LeHood announces that the feds will cover the cost overruns or that New York is contributing to the project.

If LeHood comes up with an acceptable solution to the financial inequities of the project, Christie should insist upon an evalution of the wisdom of building a tunnel that ends 150 feet below Macy’s, rather than a tunnel that could be built in partnership with Amtrak that would end at Penn/Moynihan Station before he commits billions of New Jersey’s dollars to the project.

If the Neptune Nudniks don’t want to be informed by one of their own, maybe they will learn from the Star Ledger which has an excellent article on the controversy.

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