“Snooki’s Law” Advances In NJ State Senate

A bill inspired by “Snooki’s” 2011 appearance at Rutgers that paid the Realty TV star $32,000 to advise students to “study hard but party harder” was advanced through the Senate Education Committee today.

Sponsored by Sen. Joe Kyrillos, S-703 decreases costs and increases transparency at higher education institutions by requiring colleges to publish an online breakdown of student fees and allow students to decline certain expenses.

“The growing cost of pursuing higher education is staggering, with many New Jersey students struggling to foot the bill and finish their degrees,” said Senator Kyrillos (R-Monmouth). “College students and their families should know exactly what they’re paying for, before their money is taken. By offering them the chance to opt-out, we are giving students the opportunity to create and pay for the college experience they want, instead of forcing them to pay for frivolous events that do not contribute to the quality education that they deserve.”

S-703 requires all higher education institutions to publish a full breakdown of student fees on the web. The fees must be sorted into categories, including “student managed entertainment” and “capitol improvement.” The bill would allow students to affirmatively opt-out of student-managed entertainment fees.

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Study finds dramatic jump in heart attacks after Superstorm Sandy struck

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Christie Nominates Prominent National Democrats To Rutgers Board Of Governors

Susan McCue. photo via Message-Global.com

Governor Chris Christie this morning nominated two distinguished Rutgers Almuni to serve on the University’s Board of Governors.

Susan McCue,  of Alexandria, VA, is the President of Message Global, a public affairs firm she founded in 2008 after serving as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999-2007.

“One of the nations’s top political strategists,” according to her website, McCue co-founded and co-chairs Reid’s Senate Majority PAC.  She is on the board of American Bridge 21st Century SuperPAC, with whom she shares her Washington, DC office space, according to the NY Times .

American Bridge has a page on it’s website that features videos of Christie.

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Former Gov. Tom Kean to replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers commencement speaker

Former Gov. Tom Kean to replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers commencement speaker (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Former Gov. Tom Kean will replace Condoleezza Rice as Rutgers University’s commencement speaker, the school announced today. Kean will deliver the address at the May 18 ceremony at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway. Rice,…

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Tolerance takes a beating at Rutgers

By Joe Schilp

Joe Schilp

As a Part-Time Lecturer for 5 years at Rutgers University, I was looking forward to attending my first Commencement Ceremony later this month, particularly to hear guest honoree, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  But today, Secretary Rice withdrew from Commencement following a protest at Rutgers featuring 50 students.  On a campus that has over 55,000 students, 50 students represents just 0.001% of the student population, and those students were between the ages of 8 and 12 during the Iraq War, about which they were protesting because Rice was a National Security Advisor during the run-up to and beginning of the war.

Clearly, these students have been coached.  And clearly, they are misguided.  Aside from the fact that Secretary Rice did not “lie” about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the internet is littered with quotes from Democrat Party leaders droning on about the presence of WMD’s that were made both before and after Bush was elected president; were they lying, too?), the war resolution passed in Congress listed over a dozen reasons for authorizing war.

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Condoleezza Rice pulls out of giving Rutgers commencement speech

Condoleezza Rice pulls out of giving Rutgers commencement speech (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of giving Rutgers University’s commencement speech today amid growing opposition among the school’s students and faculty. In a statement, Rice said she informed Rutgers President…

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New Jerseyans Find It Hard to Find Doctors Who Accept Their Insurance

New Jerseyans Find It Hard to Find Doctors Who Accept Their Insurance (via NJSpotlight)

New Jersey residents are more than four times as likely as the national average to have difficulty finding a doctor who accepts their health insurance, according to a new Rutgers University report. Of state residents between the ages of 18 and 64, 14…

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It would be great if The Star Ledger…

….put Cory Booker under a microscope like they have Governor Chris Christie and Rutgers Athletic Director Julie Hermann.

By Art Gallagher, [email protected]

photo via facebook

Star Ledger sports columnist Steve Politi has a column this morning that is part of his ongoing campaign to take down Rutgers Athletic Director Julie Hermann; Julie Hermann: It would be ‘great’ if The Star Ledger went out of business.

Politi has been trying to get Hermann fired since Rutgers hired her to turn around their Athletic Department last spring.  Something about alleged bullying and sex discrimination at a previous job and lying about whether or not she talked to the parent of a Rutgers student who alleged he had been bullied.

Turns out that Hermann doesn’t like The Star Ledger. Several weeks ago she told a journalism class that, “That’d be great [if the Star Ledger died]. I’m going to do all I can to not to give them a headline to keep them alive because I think I got them through the summer,” according to a Rutgers student alternative news site, Muckgers. (Note that Hermann didn’t actually say the words ‘if the Star Ledger died.’ She was responding to a student’s question that was not quoted.)  The Muckgers reporter broke the “news” of Hermann’s several weeks old remarks to a journalism class last Thursday, the same day The Star Ledger told 167 employees they would be out or work in September with severance pay.

As part of his pity party for his 167 colleagues, Politi wrote a column with a headline that implies Hermann threw a celebratory party to celebrate the coming hardship on those reporters, advertising execs, copy editors and clerks who don’t find work before their severance and unemployment benefits run out.

Forget, for a minute, what you think about the newspaper. It doesn’t matter if you think its Rutgers’ coverage stinks, or its news coverage is biased, or if its columnists are too smug for their own good.

What matters is this: The Star-Ledger employs a lot of people. And if the Rutgers athletic director thinks it would be great if it closed down, then she relishes the idea of seeing those people lose their livelihood, their benefits and maybe more.

I don’t know Hermann. Never talked to her.  But I’d bet that she doesn’t “relish the idea of seeing those people lose their livelihood, their benefits and maybe more.”  She probably just feels that way about Politi, who has been trying to see her lose her livelihood, benefits and more.

I don’t begrudge Politi taking his shots at Hermann.  I have no idea if his coverage of her career is accurate or not. I respect the fact that his bias against her is obvious.

But I think that The Star Ledger spending so much on an Athletic Director while giving a U.S. Senator a pass is disgraceful.

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Drones may fly over Jersey Shore, under Rutgers research project

Drones may fly over Jersey Shore, under Rutgers research project (via NJ.com)

NEW BRUNSWICK — Sea gulls and banner planes may not be the only things flying along the Jersey shoreline this summer. The Federal Aviation Administration announced last month that a consortium of universities, including Rutgers, was one of the winners…

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Front Page News?

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.

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