Peek-a-boo Francis…I see you!

By Russ Cote

So Francis favors transparency. Well that’s terrific. The first step down that long hallway toward redemption for Mr. Pallone you ask?

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Hey Frank, Where’s the $400 million? Will Anglers Have To Pay The Fee?

By Art Gallagher

Remember back in September when Frank Pallone held a press conference in Keyport to announce the $400 million he was bringing home to the bayshore with the Coastal Jobs Creation Act?  The Asbury Park Press covered it as if it were a done deal and Pallone was a hero.

In August Pallone told the NY Post’s Ken Moran that the bill would fund New Jersey’s recreational fishing registry, thereby preventing fisherman to have to pay a federal fee of $15-25 per year to fish in saltwater off New Jersey.

Well, here we are in December and there has been no movement on Pallone’s bill since July, two months before his press conference that impressed the Neptune Nudniks so much.

But the federal fee is coming, unless the New Jersey Senate passes S-1122, the companion version of which has already been passed by the Assembly, according to an Asbury Park Press piece that failed to mention the Pallone connection.

S1122, which is sponsored by Senators Jennifer Beck and Jeff Van Drew, would require the NJ DEP to set up a free state registery for recreational fisherman and to apply for “exempted state designation” so that NJ fisherman would not have to participate in or pay for the federal program. S1122 also allows the state to impose a state saltwater recreational fishing license, which is currently prohibited.

According the the NJ Recreational Fishing Alliance, the bill has strong bi-partisan support, but Senator Robert Smith, D-Middlesex, Chairman of the Senate Environment Committee won’t release the bill for a vote by the full Senate because the DEP does not want to create the state registery.

RFA makes their case for the bill, including an ecomomic impact analysis here.

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A Tale of Pallone’s Phoney History

This comment is too good not to put on the front page:

Trochilus said at 4:57 pm on October 27th, 2010:

I can partially explain Pallones’ earlier claim — this one:

“This is not Obama’s bill. This isn’t Nancy Pelosi’s bill. This is MY bill.”

I worked in the New Jersey Senate years ago when Pallone was a State Senator. He was known at the time as a bill thief.

Whenever a Republican would post a good bill for introduction, the Senate Democrat staff (who controlled the process, as they were in the majority) would simply take a copy of the intro bill, xerox it, cross out the introducer’s name, and write in Pallone’s name. Pallone would then sign intro copies, and his version would be given a priority number, while the Republican’s bill would be mere listed as “proposed for introduction” and therefore receive a higher bill number when it was actually introduced at the subsequent session. He and the staff did this over and over again in order to boost Pallone’s profile.

One day, they did it to Senator Frank Graves, a powerful Senate Democrat from Paterson, and Graves went verbally ballistic on Pallone on the Senate floor at the next session.

Pallone just stood there with that silly smirk on his face, never bothering to deny it because he knew it was true.

He has been claiming that bills are his for a long, long time! A habit of a lifetime.

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What’s On Phoney Palloney’s Mind Today?

Frank Pallone Jr. Asking @MLB World Series teams to ban chewing tobacco. It hurts more than players when so many young ppl watch & are influenced by players.

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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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Neptune Township Gets $725K For Cops. Pallone Had Nothing To Do With It

Phoney Palloney Is At It Again,  Asbury Park Press  Falls For It (Willingly?) Again

By Art Gallagher

The United States Department of Justice announced their Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants on Thursday.  They awarded $298 million to fund the hiring and retaining of 1,388 state, local and tribal law enforcement officers by 379 police and sheriffs departments in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.  The funding will be administered by the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), and is being awarded under the COPS Hiring Program.  

The Neptune Township Police Department was among the 379 departments nationwide to get a grant, $725,000.  They applied and met the criteria.

Phoney Palloney told the Asbury Park Press about the grant and they wrote a storythat made it sound like Pallone had something to do with Neptune getting the grant.

New Brunswick, also in Pallone’s 6th congressional district, got almost $1.6 million in COPS funds.  That amount wasn’t mentioned in the APP article, nor did Gannett’s outlet that covers New Brunswick, mycentraljersey.com mention it.  Pallone must have polling data that tells him he needs free press support in Monmouth, but not in Middlesex.

Just as we saw with the coverage of Pallone’s Fish Tales , his $400 million fish counting stimulus that will never be passed by congress, the Asbury Park Press is in the tank for Frank Pallone.  They’re not fair and biased.  They’re just biased, pretending not to be.  They’re unfair and biased.

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