"charged with 'manufacturing' 17 marijuana plants that he used to treat his Multiple Sclerosis. Wilson faced 20 years in state prison for this crime. At trial, Superior Court Judge Robert Reed would not let the jury hear the reason that Wilson grew the marijuana plants, essentially removing Wilson's only defense."
Senator Raymond Lesniak, who was a chief proponent of New Jersey's medical marijuana law, had this appeal to Gov. Chris Christie:
"I am disappointed by the recent decision of the Supreme Court to deny the appeal of John Ray Wilson. He was merely trying to alleviate the symptoms of a dreadfully painful and regressive disease. It is unconscionable that this Friday he will be behind bars. Three years ago, I called on Gov. Corzine to commute the sentence of Mr. Wilson. After inaction with the last governor, I was hopeful Gov. Christie would better understand the unfair reality of this situation. Unfortunately, Gov. Christie has been just like Corzine, refusing to use his and only his power to make things right when the true intentions of the law were misapplied. (Ironically) before John Ray Wilson completes his prison sentence, the State of NJ will have its medical marijuana program up and running, and Mr. Wilson may likely be using medical marijuana behind bars or the prescription pain killers he couldn't afford, paid for by the state's taxpayers. Governor Christie should commute his sentence immediately."
"When you come to a fork in the road....Take it." - Montclair NJ native Yogi Berra
"We are the victim of our own success." - New Jersey Senator Bob Smith (D-Piscataway) testifying today before the Assembly Telecom & Utilities Committee supporting legislation on solar power
"[Today's proposed legislation] would have a devastating impact on the economy of the state." - Stephanie Brand - Director of the NJ Division of Rate Counsel
We have come to a fork in the road with regard to the deployment of solar energy in New Jersey. Today, Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula (D-Somerset) and his Telecom & Utilities Committee took a big step in deciding which path to take.
More, including an interview with Assemblyman Chivukula, after the fold...
Well, we assumed that Jon Corzine couldn't fall any further politically, but now it's just about over.
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign returned campaign contributions from Jon S. Corzine, former chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd., according to a Democratic official.
All that's left is the legal end.
Fortunately, there's a lot of little green pieces of paper to cushion the final fall.
Brian Williams can't even say the word "billion" without wincing. And Corzine, on camera as he testified this morning to answer a subpoena from the House Agriculture Committee, looks awful.
He did not take the Fifth, which many expected he would. Instead, he apologized for the impact the disappearance of $1.2 Billion will have on the farmers and other MF Global clients whose money was required to be segregated from the company's, but was apparently co-mingled. And NBC reported it all as another risky behavior of Corzine's, like riding in a car without a seat belt. Rough stuff. And going to get rougher.
Jon Corzine, in prepared statement to the House Agriculture Committee:
I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.
Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg TV pointed out this morning that this is the first time in over 100 years that a former United States Senator has been subpoenaed to testify in Congress.
The former NJ governor apologizes for MF Global's bankruptcy under his watch this morning and "to all those affected". But he says he doesn't know where the missing money went.
Corzine will say he was stunned when he was told Sunday, October 30, 2011, that MF Global could not account for hundreds of millions of dollars of client money. Corzine did not specify an amount, but investigators are trying to track $1.2 Billion, about double the amount first thought missing. It appears these were funds that were to be held in the company's segregated accounts. Corzine now stands to be accused of co-mingling client money with firm money.
The FBI and other federal authorities are now also involved, as well as the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. You can imagine the forensic accounting that will be required to reconcile this, and get answers on who did what with which accounts.
In what constitutes an article by Politico's standards, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's recent tantrum, which some have described as an audition for the VP slot with the seemingly inevitable Republican Presidential nominee (unless one of the other six candidates not named Herman Cain and hopefully named Michele Bachmann have something to say about it), Mitt Romney, about President Barack Obama's so-called failure to lead the so-called supercommittee to reach a deal on our country's budget deficit, was basically reprinted for public consumption, including Christie calling Obama "a bystander in the Oval Office" and asking him "What the hell are we paying you for?". His tirade goes further to say the following:
"In New Jersey, the reason [problems got solved] is because I called people into the room and said we're going to solve this problem and I had people of good will on the other side who said they believed it was their obligation, regardless of party, to get done things like pension and benefit reform," the governor said, adding, "Why the president of the United States refuses to do this is astonishing to me."
As obnoxious as Christie's entire tirade was, what bothered me most about the "article" was his stenographer's unwillingness or inability to compare and contrast the political dynamic here in New Jersey with what is going on in Washington and recognize that both are broken for very different reasons.
In Washington, there is a Republican minority in the Senate that can bring our entire government to a standstill by filibustering everything that comes before them and a majority in the House that passes legislation that is so extreme that there is no chance that it would ever survive a Senate committee much less get a vote in the Senate.
Meanwhile, in Trenton, we have Democratic "leadership" that is bought and paid for by party bosses who have more in common with our state's Republican Governor than our party's rank-and-file. As a result, we have a facade of bipartisanship presented to the general public and the lazy mass media, where the storyline is always that Christie presents an initiative in its purest, right-wing form, the Democratic leadership presents a modicum of resistance, making a little bit of noise in the process, Christie scales his initiative back slightly, and the Democratic leadership claims victory, delivers the votes needed for Christie's initiative to pass, while everyone else votes against it, lamenting its passage, while retaining the "high road" even though most, if not all of them, elected and recently re-elected the leadership that continues to enable Christie on each and every issue, while he crows about all of his "bipartisan" successes.
So who are the real bystanders? To be fair, I think that President Obama failed our country, once again, this summer when he refused to heed former President Bill Clinton's advice and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling on constitutional grounds and let the fight go from there. It was not as if the latest in what seems like an endless string of compromises earned him any more good will with the Republicans in Washington, who continue to block him on everything that he tries to do, than every other compromise before it.
But Obama's willingness to capitulate to Republicans on every issue pales in comparison to what we have seen from the Democrats in Trenton who went so far as to let the Republican minority write the first budget that they would pass without even considering for a moment the possibility of a government shutdown like the one which took place when they could not reach an accord with then-Democratic Governor Jon "MF Global Clusterfuck" Corzine on their first budget. The pen/ben debacle was only the latest in an almost equally long string of capitulations that started before Christie was even sworn in as Governor, when 9 Democrats did not vote for marriage equality legislation that could have passed and been signed into law by Governor Clusterfuck (kudos to Rosi for making it not only acceptable, but cool, to use a word like clusterfuck in political discourse - this is second only to the omnipresence of the phrase "batshit crazy" that people like the aforementioned Congresswoman Bachmann have inspired).
Per Reuters and now widely reported: The trustee handling the liquidation of MF Global now says the shortfall is double what was originally anticipated. That's up to $1.2 billion dollars of customer funds missing from the derivatives brokerage Jon Corzine ran after leaving the governorship of New Jersey.
Amazingly, the Careers page at MF Global's website is still up, looks to still be recruiting, and is just begging for somebody to slap up a parody site. MF Global is still promising a "culture of ownership where highly driven and motivated employees can thrive". Because, after all, at MF Global " it is the caliber of our employees that differentiates us".
It feels insane to write in one day both a post on Newarkers ready to sleep outside to protest the concentration of wealth in the deep pockets of fancy people. And then, these dastardly shenanigans.
Anybody need a job? Looks like MF (what's that stand for?) Global's hiring.
Contested statewide Democratic primary elections do not happen very often here in New Jersey. Since I started paying close attention to New Jersey politics in 1997, there have only been four seriously contested statewide Democratic primary elections. In 1997, then-Woodbridge Mayor Jim McGreevey defeated Congressman Rob Andrews and Morris County Prosecutor Michael Murphy for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. In 2000, Jon Corzine bought more votes than his senatorial opponent, former Governor Jim Florio, was able to earn. In February 2008, Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in the Presidential primary election. In June of that year, Andrews lost his second statewide primary election when he challenged the incumbent U.S. Senator, Frank Lautenberg.
It appears as if we will have a hotly contested Democratic gubernatorial primary election in 2013. The most likely candidates at the moment are State Senators Barbara Buono, Dick Codey, and Steve Sweeney. It is possible that other candidates could come out of the woodwork over the next year or so, but for the sake of this discussion, the names are less important than the questions that the current political dynamic in the state, which has Democratic Party bosses, including but not limited to Steve Adubato and George Norcross, closely aligned with Republican Governor Chris Christie, raises about how serious these bosses are about defeating Christie.
These bosses and their acolytes in the State legislature have enabled Christie to get more of his agenda passed than our last Democratic Governor, Corzine, and have never even come close to a government shutdown like the one which occurred as a result of the conflict between Corzine and then-Assembly Speaker, Joe Roberts, a Norcross minion, over whether the state sales tax should be increased, and if so, how the additional revenue should be spent. So it stands to reason that Adubato, Norcross et al would probably prefer to have one of their own (Steve Sweeney being the most likely candidate, but Assemblyman Louis Greenwald is another possibility) as Governor than Christie, but in lieu of that, it would not be safe to assume that they would prefer someone else, like Buono or Codey, over Christie.
The Democratic mayor of Monroe Township is in trouble. He's accused of nepotism, sexual harassment, tax evasion, pay-for-access, racial discrimination, and violation of town ordinances.
Among other things, Mayor Michael Gabbianelli allegedly provided a job as a police officer to his son, Michael Gabbianelli Jr, despite an anti-nepotism ordinance. He also is alleged to have discriminated against an African-American roadside vendor pursuing a sales license in favor of other vendors who are white. To some people, the most egregious of all these charges is that hizzoner blatantly lights up and smokes on government property in violation of town ordinances.
Given these alleged transgressions, it is inevitable that Gabbianelli will face increased scrutiny, maybe even removal from office or prosecution. But there's an almost foolproof way the mayor can alleviate or even avoid the consequences of his actions.
Bloomberg is reporting that Jon Corzine, Chairman and CEO of MF Global Holdings Ltd., has resigned from all posts, and will not seek any severance payments, the news coming in an email statement this morning.
He was once touted as a possible replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He was the solidly progressive United States Senator whose progression to New Jersey governor was once seen as a stepping stone to a White House run. He is a top bundler in Barack Obama's re-election. And he, and the generosity he showed with his ample checkbook, built the New Jersey Democratic Party during his rise, funding downballot candidates and struggling local parties. But as CEO of the securities firm MF Global, Jon Corzine presided over a company that eventually bet too heavily on European sovereign debt, was rocked by credit rating downgrades and investors pulling out, filed for bankruptcy protection just yesterday amid rumors that $700 million in client funds were missing, then confirmation that federal regulators were indeed investigating $700 million - $700 million! - unaccounted for.
Now multiple news sources (here's WSJ and Associated Press) are reporting that MF Global has admitted to federal regulators that money had been diverted out of customer accounts, which is against the law.
Impossible to know at this point how deep this goes, who if anyone will be held culpable, and what will happen in the Chapter 11 filing, or in the future of the man running the show at MF Global. The press on this 8th largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history and on MF Global's chief have been brutal (see Wow, Jon Corzine - Way To Fly Your Company Into A Mountain at Business Insider). And may get worse. You'd expect that. This sounds like a clusterfuck of gigantic proportions. That said, we don't know what facts will eventually shake out here, or who the pointy knives will come out for. But I'm for more regulation of of financial institutions that gamble big for bigger payouts.
Imagine that you are invited to a wedding reception at a snooty Five-Star restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. You know the chef is one of the best in the world, internationally famous, and you are looking forward to sharing a top-notch meal with your friends.
Imagine, also, that you are a vegetarian on a low-carb diet. You arrive at the reception and find that your dinner choices are filet mignon or pasta. What do you do?
Clearly, you can't order the meat. You're hungry, so you can't choose to skip the dinner. You reluctantly get the pasta, which tastes so good that you overindulge on carbs that evening. You opted for the lesser of two evils and had a satisfactory but not satisfying dinner.
The New York Times points to bad news for Jon Corzine's MF Global. The firm's bets on European debt have apparently not worked out well and our former governor is reportedly calling "seemingly every major Wall Street firm" looking for a rescuer to buy it. Frankly it all seems like reckless gambling to me, even if I like Corzine. We can all at least hope this is a semi-isolated problem, and not the start of another general collapse of the financial firms.
On June 3, 2009, Chris Christie defeated Steve Lonegan in the Republican gubernatorial primary election with 184,085 votes to Lonegan's 140,946 votes. On this same day, Jon Corzine, who ran for re-election virtually unopposed (yes, there were other Democrats on the ballot, but none represented a credible primary challenge) received 154,448 votes.
I think that it is reasonable to argue that most, if not all, of the 150K+ voters who went to the polls on this day to vote for Jon Corzine wanted him to win re-election in November as well. If I am right about this, then I think that it is also reasonable to argue that these voters would have improved the chances of achieving their desired outcome if they had cast their votes for Steve Lonegan and not Jon Corzine.
Regardless of how unpopular Corzine might have been at the time, Christie won in 2009, because he did well with independent voters. I defy anyone to argue that a far-right-wing gadfly like Lonegan would have performed nearly as well with these voters. While it is conceivable that many more independents would have voted for the independent candidate, Chris Daggett in November if Lonegan would have been the GOP nominee, I do not believe that he would have received enough votes to win or tip the election to Lonegan.
So if you accept my premise that 45,000 Democratic votes for Lonegan instead of Corzine in June 2009 would have done more to help Corzine win in November 2009, please continue to below the fold so that we can talk more about what this premise could and should mean for progressive activism in the future.
...NJDSC Chairman John Wisniewski for putting his name on the following e-mail:
Dear Supporter,
Please join the New Jersey Democratic State Committee for our 3rd Annual Women's Equality Event honoring County Chairs Charlotte DeFilippo, Elizabeth Muoio, Marguerite Schaffer and Lois Zarish at the home of Marcia Marley on Thursday, August 25th from 6 to 8 pm. Contributions are $91 commemorating 91 years since women received the right to vote.
We are honoring these county chairs who have blazed the trail for all of our women candidates and set an example in their county. Chairs DeFilippo, Muoio, Schaffer and Zarish embody our Democratic ideals and they work tirelessly to make sure women are on the ballot and to elect Democrats every November.
No other Governor in the country has targeted women in this manner. Chris Christie has repeatedly displayed a pattern of insensitivity and vindictiveness to the issues that are most important to the women in the state of New Jersey. He's used the health of women as a pawn to court the far right of his. The women of New Jersey deserve better.
The county chairs we are honoring have stood up for these issues and supported candidates that stand up for women. Your support at this event will help enable the NJDSC to better use its resources in this current fight and help train and elect future candidates.
We hope you will join the NJDSC and women leaders from across the state and show your support! To purchase tickets please click here or to RSVP or for more information, please email Heather at hdejong@njdems.org or call 609-392-3367.
Sincerely,
John Wisniewski, Chairman
I have to be honest. I don't know anything about Chairwomen Muoio, Schaffer, and Zarish, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are more deserving of their awards than Union County Democratic Chairwoman, Charlotte DeFilippo, who during the decade-plus that I have been involved in NJ politics, has done more to prevent progressive women from being elected to prominent offices than anyone in this state in both political parties. If Chairwoman DeFilippo is deserving of any award, it should be the Phyllis Schafly Award for her years of disservice to the progressive women of Union County and anywhere else in New Jersey where her influence has had an impact.
I have at least three examples of Chairwoman DeFilippo's negative actions against progressive women candidates for elected office during this period of time and if this topic interests you, please feel free to continue reading below the fold as I tell the stories of would-be Congresswoman Maryanne Connelly, State Senator Linda Stender, and Assemblywoman Ellen Steinberg. Imagine if you will that the following stories are accompanied by Arlo Guthrie-style acoustic guitar strumming a la "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (Unrelated to this issue, I had the opportunity to visit Southbridge, MA recently and found the restaurant that used to be "Alice's Restaurant" and is now "Theresa's Southbridge Cafe").
Governor Christie like many Americans suffers from asthma. On Thursday he says he experienced breathing problems and his inhaler did not provide the usual relief. Wisely he headed for near-by Somerset hospital. His same-day release from the hospital was good news. Maria Comella, the governor's communications director told reporters, "Christie received a chest X-ray and EKG and everything appeared normal." Such is also good news. Yesterday the governor said he felt "Fabulous." More good news.
The health of our state's Chief Executive is a legitimate concern for New Jerseyans and of interest to a broader swath of Americans who would like him to run for the presidency. Governor Christie during his campaign, later in Executive orders, and during his tenure has touted transparency. Such transparency is not apparent regarding the recent incident. Physicians who treated him have made no statements regarding his condition. When Governor Corzine had a life-threatening auto accident we were overwhelmed with information from his doctors. Corzine's accident probably was a much more serious incident, but without independent information from Somerset Hospital we have no way of knowing. Corzine asked his doctors to provide extensive information. It appears that Christie did not make a similar request to the doctors who attended him.
It is one thing for his communications staff to report on his current health, but it is another thing for the hospital staff to explain the results of their examination and tests and to answer questions from the press. Pulmonary function tests, for example, are standard procedures following such an incident, but we have been told nothing about these test results. Governor Christie should authorize hospital staff to address the press. Independent disclosure from physicians creates transparency, not a statement from the governor that he feels "fabulous."
A big part of the Chris Christie zeitgeist is that there is one set of rules for everybody else, and then all the stuff he gets to do, because the rules for him are ... just for him. It feels like we've been covering that part of Christie forever. Some NJ reporters recognize Christie's pattern, most national reporters do not. The Iowa GOP bigwigs Christie flew back in our chopper to see might know, but they don't care. They're just bored with the dullest GOP presidential field in a generation.
So, today when the law and order, fiscal conservative, better-with-your-tax-money-than-the-other-guy governor got called out for commandeering a 55-foot, $12.5 million helicopter meant for fighting terrorism and transporting critically-injured accident victims to ride to a kids ballgame and a political meeting, the very first thing his spokesman did was try to equalize Christie's bad actions.
How? Pretty much by saying all the other guys did it. The fact that that isn't actually true, at least for the governor Christie campaigned against and beat, doesn't seem to scratch Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak's story too much.
Informed that Drewniak told reporters, "This has historically been the case in prior administrations as well, and we continue to be judicious in limiting its use," Joshua Zeitz, senior policy adviser to former governor Jon Corzine and current Chief of Staff at the Corzine-helmed brokerage firm MF Global, clarified for Blue Jersey Corzine's policy during his time as Governor:
He always paid for a private helicopter when traveling on private or political business. We understood it to be illegal to use state resources for private or political purposes. Always.
More disturbing is the sense that we've been here before with this governor. As Courier Post reporter Jane Roh suggests in a tweet for her readable take on this matter - Why Christie's state chopper ride is a BFD:
Does state chopper ride + US atty travel expenses + use of state credit = disturbing pattern for @GovChristie?
Gov. Chris Christie took aim at Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, (D-15), Wednesday over a bill the assemblywoman sponsored two years ago that allowed for the early prison release of certain convicted criminals.
On March 5, Rondell Jones allegedly murdered Newark resident Eric Thomas in Jersey City, just six weeks after Jones was released under the program. Jones was paroled from Garden State Youth Correctional Facility on Jan. 24, just a year after his conviction on Jan. 22 for the unlawful possession of a handgun and conspiracy for drug dealing, according to the state Department of Corrections website.
Christie put the blame for Thomas' death squarely at the feet of Watson Coleman, saying Thomas' death was on her conscience.
Asw. Watson-Coleman sponsored (and Gov. Corzine signed) legislation that allowed certain prisoners to be released from prison under certain circumstances. Because a person that was released early under this program murdered someone upon their release, somehow Governor Christie thinks it is logical and appropriate to lay 100 percent of the blame on Asw. Watson-Coleman.
Chris Christie can star in all the "YouTube moments" - as his staff calls those taxpayer-funded propaganda video clips - he wants. But he's got nowhere near the power to attract cameras that the mayor of Newark has.
Season 2 of Sundance Channel's Peabody-Award winning documentary series Brick City finds Booker caved under Newark's financial problems and violent crime. The first episode, premiering Sunday, picks up Booker's story just before the Christie era, the mayor firing up police academy recruits.
We remember that day - October 13, 2009. Former sheriff Kim Guadagno had just said she was afraid on the streets of Newark. And in a show of solidarity, Jon Corzine ran through those streets with the mayor, and those recruits. I never liked the optics. If the message was that Newark's streets were safe, leave the recruits home. But there's another reason we remember that day; Jon Corzine ran wearing a Blue Jersey tee shirt, the workout wear of the Blue Jersey Road Runners Club. (Get a glimpse of that at the 2:48 mark).
There's no ease in Newark for Cory Booker. Nothing's simple. Facebook and Oprah money just are a Band-aid. And as Brick City 2 documents, his city's populated by as many who revile him as see him as savior. But no other city, no other mayor, has the spotlight and the cameras this guy does. And New Jersey cannot rise without Newark rising.
This is Brick City's season opener, running time: 45 minutes.
Among other things, Mayor Michael Gabbianelli allegedly provided a job as a police officer to his son, Michael Gabbianelli Jr, despite an anti-nepotism ordinance. He also is alleged to have discriminated against an African-American roadside vendor pursuing a sales license in favor of other vendors who are white. To some people, the most egregious of all these charges is that hizzoner blatantly lights up and smokes on government property in violation of town ordinances.
