Tom Kean Jr. has repeatedly and viciously attacked Bob Menendez for "enriching himself" with his position in the House of Representatives. How did Menendez do it?
A real estate agent rented Menendez's childhood home to a non-profit community group from Hudson County at slightly below average market rate. Menendez later assisted the non-profit in obtaining federal funds to open up a health center for poor and uninsured Hudson County residents. The community group continued to rent the property from Menendez, and stayed in the property even after Menendez sold it.
Really. That's the whole story. There's really nothing else to it.
Yet Junior is running ads on TV and radio claiming that this is proof Menendez is corrupt, and Junior is outraged! Outraged, I say!
"A company headed by President Bush's brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.
"With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush's company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally.
"At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers." (LA Times)
Start being outraged by this, Junior, and we'll maybe buy your outrage that Bob Menendez is helping the poor get health care.
You know, I've been getting more and more encouraged by the Linda Stender campaign against Mike Ferguson for the 7th District Congressional seat over the past month. Stender's put out some more aggressive mail pieces and a better TV ad campaign, and she's raised a ton of money.
Add in the independent poll putting the race at two points, and I almost got positive about this race.
But then State Senator Joe Kyrillos went on Gabe Pressman's show this weekend and totally deflated my balloon. He has convinced me that the people of the 7th District would never vote against Mike Ferguson for one very simple reason:
And they're going to return him [Ferguson to the Congress]. They are scared that Charlie Rangel--who just sat in this chair--might be the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That's what really scares the people of Mike Ferguson's district.
In all seriousness, if that's the best they can do then they are in serious shit.
Here's a pretty good ad for Linda Stender going after an issue with Mike Ferguson that polls say is a real weak spot: embryonic stem cell research.
And, just to note, this is the best commercial in the history of commercials 'cause of the incredibly hot chick in the last frame. Amazingly, she married me!
I think it is a statement on the condition of our newspaper industry that tripe such as this actually gets printed.
Washington Township voters may want to wash their hands after using their computers. The sleaze they can view in the township council election race is courtesy of the Gloucester County Democratic Party.
That first line had me thinking they were doing some sort of investigation into online porn or gambling or some sort of "family value" moral issue - because God forbid that they print anything about Americans getting killed in Iraq or Afghanistan or look out the window to see how the Bush cut-and-run tax policy has hurt the people around them. I think it's a bit much to blame that on the Democrats. On second thought, it's just hypocritical to do so. Take a look below the flip to see what I mean.
The Jersey Journal relays the Newhouse News Service story:
The state education commissioner has called Charles T. Epps Jr.'s controversial dual role as Jersey City school superintendent and a state assemblyman "problematic," and indicated she may put a halt to him serving in one of those jobs.
In her confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, acting Commissioner Lucille Davy stressed Epps' job performance as the state-appointed superintendent remained under review, and she had yet to make a determination.
Epps should be helped with his decision and be told to step down from the School Board before he is thrown tits-over-teakettle through the back door. He's done a lousy job and he's proven that he's willing to go to any length to extend to himself any perk imaginable at any cost unimaginable or defensable.
I have maintained over time that Mike Ferguson is not such a bad guy or father, but an incompetent and weak Congressman who makes wrong choices for his district and our country. The guy is, I've said, a lightweight who has been propelled forward by rich parents, powerful forces from the religous right, and corrupt DC Republicans like Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Jack Abramoff.
But sometimes you have to wonder if he is a lightweight or just meanspirited like the rest of the DC Republican leadership. Check out this from Tom Moran's column in the Star Ledger:
If you were to design a weapon against Republican Congressman Mike Ferguson, you could not do much better than Tricia Riccio. ...
She is an articulate soccer mom whose son, Carl, broke his neck during a high school wrestling match in 2003.
Since then, she has become a crusader for embryonic stem cell research, on the reasonable grounds that it presents the only chance her son will ever lift himself out of his wheelchair and walk. ...
But Riccio had something more. She made it personal. She made Ferguson sound cruel.
In a meeting in his office last year, she said, Ferguson flat-out told her that her son's case was hopeless.
"He said, 'Mrs. Riccio, your son is not going to walk in his lifetime.'"
Not only is this an unbelievably cruel thing to say, and unbelievable stupid considering Ferguson has absolutely no training in medicine, but it is also unbelievable obtuse. Ferguson voted to block funding for embryonic stem cell research, the very teatment that could allow Mrs. Riccio's son to walk again!
If that treatment doesn't arrive in time for her son to benefit, it will be Congressmen like Mike Ferguson's fault. Yet he has the gall to stand there and tell a grieving mother that her son will never walk again without taking any responsibility for that reality.
Worse still, Ferguson constantly hides his opposition to embryonic stem cell research by claiming that adult stem cell research is just as beneficial. But his statement to Mrs. Ricci proves that he doesn't believe that! He clearly told her that there is no medicine -- including the adult stem cell research he pushes and an alternative -- that will help her son even though real scientists with real training and real research say that embryonic stem cell research can help.
It's shocking that Ferguson is allowed to pretend to have family values and care about children. He doesn't have either.
Wrong choices, wrong Congressman. And just downright mean.
(Dunno how this one slipped out. - promoted by Xpatriated Texan)
Amazingly, Tom Kean Junior's ability to disrespect our military literally knows no bounds. First, he refused to answer questions from Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) but said he'd give them written answers. Then he said he wasn't going to answer because that group was never going to vote for him anyway. Now, we have this clip of Junior doing what he does best.
Yes, that's NJGOP Senatorial hope-ful Thomas Kean, Junior running away like a little girl whose Barbie doll just got eaten by a pit bull. But it isn't his opponent that strikes such fear in Baby Kean - it's a mom who doesn't like being ignored or lied to.
Tom Kean Jr. likes to pretend that he is a "reformer" along the lines of John McCain. Of course, given the reality of McCain's own history that may be true: neither one is a straight talking reformer.
Check out this quote from Kean Jr. about the torture bill that passed the Congress.
"I would have voted with Senators Graham, Warner and McCain who believe enemy combatants have appropriate due process under this legislation. I am pleased the Senate passed the bill. The version passed by the Senate respects the guidelines of the Geneva Convention, and will help us to defeat terrorism in a manner that protects our soldiers and other heroes while respecting American values and principles."
The first thing to note is that Kean Jr. is pleased that the President of the United States will be authorized to, with the stroke of a secret pen, arrest, detain and torture any American citizen without judicial review. Frankly, that's just sick.
The second is that Kean Jr. decides to claim he would have voted with the three "mavericks" who negotiated this odious bill and not the two idiots who represent New Jersey in the Senate, Menendez and Lautenberg.
Even on a situation where we are destroying centuries of civil rights by allowing the government to arrest people without review, this asshat is playing politics.
CQPolitics.com reports that Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez has been forced off-message by allegations of ethical misconduct that have been leveled by his Republican challenger, Thomas Kean Jr., and have recently drawn Menendez unwelcome headlines in the New Jersey press. With polls reflecting either a tied race or a slight edge for Kean, CQPolitics.com has changed its rating on the race to No Clear Favorite from Leans Democratic.
Can you imagine how shocked all of those pro-Junior folks are going to be when the turn the teevee on and don't see big daddy Kean?
For a couple of months now, I've heard Democrats say, "Junior sure isn't his daddy." Well, I wasn't in New Jersey when his daddy was governor, so I took their word for it. The thing is, it's looking like Junior is cut from exactly the same cloth as his daddy - and it's a cloth that makes New Jersey look like a saddlesore schoolmarm.
Ok, maybe a kid's toy.
Here's the thing. Big Daddy Kean is all over the place pushing this stupid 9/11 fantasy movie (I hear it has hobbits and everything). So his son, walking in the shade of daddy's shadow, criticize's Bob Menendez for the Republican Party falling down on the job of improving national security since 9/11.
So someone tell me - how are they different again?
Dozens of schools in Hudson County, most notably Jersey City, again failed to meet education standards in the past year, the state Department of Education reported yesterday.
Overall, 643 schools statewide, or 26.5 percent, did not meet standards in 2006, compared to 822, or 34 percent, last year, the department said. Some schools have closed or merged over the years.
In Jersey City - the state's second-largest school district - 27 out of 33 schools failed to pass muster, according to the department's preliminary results from the standardized tests administered in May, officials said.
Yes, ladies and gentlement, only six schools in Jersey City are worth sending your children to. And for accomplishing that asshattery, Charlie Epps is paid well over $200,000. Since JC is an Abbott District, that means that YOU paid him $200,000 to make sure 82% of the schools he supervises FAILED.
Lumping Jersey City's state-appointed schools chief, Charles T. Epps Jr., with Newark's free-spending ex-mayor, Sharpe James, Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Randolph, called this week for "someone" to hold them accountable.
Citing Monday's Jersey Journal story that revealed Epps, also an assemblyman, has placed four school district employees on his Assembly payroll, Merkt stated in a press release:
"Clearly this raises questions about what jobs these individuals are doing and on whose time they are doing these jobs.
"There is legitimate concern that these employees are getting paid to do legislative work on school district time or vice versa," Merkt added.
Two separate investigations - one state, one federal - has been launched into James' use of two city-issued credit cards, which he used to rack up nearly $160,000 worth of expenses over the past four years, including trips to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.
"New Jersey citizens are fed up with government officials using tax dollars as their own personal expense accounts and double dipping on the taxpayer dime," Merkt said.
I never heard of Mr. Merkt before I read this article, but I agree that "someone" should hold Epps accountable. Both Epps and James are prime examples of everything that's wrong with New Jersey politics. Both men have operated in their own fifedoms for far too long without any realistic accountability. Both have enriched themselves at the expense of the public.
If nothing they have done is illegal or unethical, then they should have nothing to fear from an independent investigation into their financial backgrounds. Despite its abuses at the federal level, an office of Independent Counsel operating under the supervision of the State Supreme Court and having full investigative authority for all levels of government in New Jersey would be a welcomed action. I won't say that the level of public corruption today is worse than in prior years, but I will say that the level of confidence the public has in its government is as low as it has ever been. This would be a step towards reversing that.
In March 2005, Mike Ferguson announced the following [pdf] in questioning the director of the National Institute of Health:
Of course, the question of when life begins is not a question of someone’s personal ethics or their religion or anything else. It is a question of science. I think that is important to note for the record.
I will give Mike $200.00 from my own checkbook for his campaign if he can show me one scientific experiement that proves life begins when an egg is fertilized. One that conclusively shows that it is that moment, and not when the fertilized egg attaches to the uterus. Or when the fetus could live on its own outside the womb. Or at 24 weeks. Or when you can see fingers on the untrasound.
Seriously. $200.00 from my checking account he can report to the Federal Election Commission and use as proof that I have supported his campaign in return for one scientific experiment that proves a fertilized egg is a human being.
But I am not looking for sophistry, where you simply argue for it using sophistic methods. I'm not looking for you to say, "Human beings start when the genetic material is set, the genetic material is set when the egg is fertilized, so a human being starts when an egg is fertilized." That's just a circular argument where you define something in a way that proves your point, then proclaim your point is proven. Watch, I can do it too:
"Human life starts when an individual can live on their own outside the womb, fetuses have been kept alive outside the womb using modern science as early as 21 weeks, so life begins at 21 weeks."
But that's not science. That's philosophical logic, and flawed philisophical logic at that. Really, it's just asserting something you believe to be true but cannot prove.
But you say it's science. And the basis of science is that something we consider true must be demonstrated by experiement, and that the experiment must be repeatable under similar conditions. So get me that experiment and I'll drive the check over.
But if you can't produce that experiement, stop saying it's science. 'Cause it's not.
Still fresh from the scandal over his extravagance in Oxford on the tax-payer's dime, Charlie Epps is now finding his way onto the pages of the Jersey Journal for another scandal. Earl Morgan and Ken Thorbourne report on the Superintendant/Assemblyman's hiringpractices:
Jersey City's schools chief Charles T. Epps Jr., who doubles as a state assemblyman for Jersey City and Bayonne, has hired four school district employees to part-time jobs on his state assembly staff - further blurring the lines between his two public roles.
Ellen Zadroga, Epps' $129,508-a-year executive assistant and Charles Trefurt, a $129,508-a-year special assistant to the superintendent, have both been hired as $12,000-a-year legislative aides, according to state records obtained by The Jersey Journal.
Epps has also hired Linda Zupko, an analyst with the board, and part-time Board of Education security guard Robert Marshall as legislative aides. Zupko is paid $67,000 annually for her day job and earns another $5,000 a year for her Assembly work.
It seems that Prince Charlie just can't keep his jobs straight.
I wrote briefly over at Mid-Term Madness about Republican incumbent Senator George Allen's recent racist remarks towards a young man with dark skin. Apparently, in Allen's world, everyone who is darker than Beige number 5 is not really an American. To make matters worse, the term was actually French slang and, drum roll, Mr. Allen has a French Tunisian mother. So he knew full well what he was saying and what it referred to. He just thought he was sly enough for the entire world not to know.
As the events continue to unfold - and I'm still not positive that the use of a racial slur will hurt him among some of the Republican base in Virginia - it's dawned on me that this is actually becoming a trend in Republican circles.
From the Jersey Journal's Bonnie Friedman, we hear of this:
The City Council is being asked, once again, to authorize a controversial plan to take two businesses in the Northwest Redevelopment Zone - but it's anyone's guess if Mayor David Roberts can win the five votes needed to introduce the ordinance at tonight's council meeting.
In March, the City Council withdrew an ordinance authorizing the condemnation of two Grand Street properties, citing a lawsuit filed on behalf of the redeveloper - Ursa/Tarragon.
The lawsuit accused the City Council of dragging its feet on the vote, and as a result, violating a 1998 redeveloper contract that requires the governing body to use its power of eminent domain to take the businesses - D. Kwitman and Son, a factory, and U-Store-It, a self-storage facility.
Last month, Superior Court Judge Carmen Messano ordered the City of Hoboken to "introduce an ordinance or ordinances, or choose not to introduce any ordinances providing for the acquisition of properties."
Roberts looks around his little town and sees nothing but businesses to gobble up and re-sell to his friends and contributors (but I repeat myself).
Complicating matters further is a potential conflict of interest involving two council members. Michele Russo, the wife of former Mayor Anthony Russo and the mother of Councilman Michael Russo, is the designated real estate agent if the properties are turned into condos.
Councilwoman Theresa Castellano, who is a cousin of Anthony Russo, is also likely to abstain.
Gee. Makes me wonder how such a thing ever made it to the City Council. Right. And I also wonder if the Husdon River still separates NY and NJ.
Councilman Peter Cammarano has promised to oppose the measure.
"I am not going to condemn private property for redevelopment," Cammarano said yesterday. "The only circumstance where I would feel comfortable condemning (property) is one that is literally a threat to public safety."
Good for Mr. Cammarano. Someone needs to kick Mayor McGreedy-Hands to the curb.
According to a memo from Corporation Counsel Joseph Sherman, "the failure of the city to adhere to its contractual obligations can subject the city to compensatory damages in excess of $20 million."
Oh wow. So now Mayor McGreedy-hands is worried about lawsuits. Why didn't this cross his mind when he seized control of the parking structure? Somehow, McGreedy-hands only gets a bout of the "Ethical Fever" when his buddies are going to get hit in the wallet.
A controversial mega-warehouse proposed for Jersey City's Hackensack River waterfront won't improve traffic congestion - but it won't make it unbearable either, a review of the traffic study prepared by the developer has concluded.
The findings by Newark-based Vollmer Associates concern a 883,000-square-foot warehouse proposed for the old PJP landfill off Routes 1&9 between Duncan and Sip avenues.
It should be noted that Vollmer is in Newark - so perhaps they mean it won't make traffic unbearable for them. People in Jersey City, however, will be born, live their entire lives, and die old and gray in a single traffic jam that used to be Routes 1&9.
Can somebody explain to me how raising one tax (in this case sales) to offset another tax (in this case property) is a good thing to do?
Sure, our property taxes are too high and funding our schools using them is destroying city and municipal governments’ ability to deliver basic services.
But every solution to the problem we get from Trenton seems to be raising a different tax to offset property taxes. We have the income tax, the stupidity tax (lottery), legalized gambling taxes (Atlantic City), and the truly bizarre rebate which takes income and sales tax dollars paid by everyone and sends dollars only to people who pay property taxes.
But each time aggregate taxes still go up for the people of New Jersey while property taxes don’t seem to be impacted all that much.
Now we have a new sales tax which will be “dedicated†by a constitutional amendment to property tax relief. Another tax which will be collected by one body of government to either: 1) send to another body of government; or 2) send back to the very same people who paid the tax.
And our leaders are talking about this if it’s a permanent solution to the property tax dilemma, and I just don’t get it. I never have. It’s robbing Peter to pay Peter. Only Peter has less money at the end of the transaction because there are costs associated with both collecting and disbursing the cash!
Small, short-term "fixes" have been proven failures over the past 30 years and will continue to be failures. The problem with property taxes in New Jersey is structural, and needs to be addressed structurally. We need a comprehensive change to our state constitution that changes how governmental services are funded, managed and constructed.
We cannot allow this half-penny "solution" to derail the effort to make comprehensive change, or else the problem will continue to get worse.
Tom Kean, Jr. - fresh from his dual debate spanking by Bob Menendez - is now being haunted by his past. He writes (ok, someone wrote it FOR him) on his campaign site:
Tom is committed to keeping the promise of Social Security for current recipients and those nearing retirement. At the same time, changes will be required to keep the program solvent for future generations. This problem can only be solved through bipartisan cooperation. In the U.S. Senate, Tom will work with Republicans and Democrats to find bipartisan solutions to the long-term challenges facing Social Security, so that this important program can continue to provide retirement security for Americans far into the future.
The problem is that the Kiddo only last year voted against a bill that would tell President Bush to keep his greedy paws off our Social Security funds - twice.
According to the Jersey Journal's Ken Thorbourne, the Crown Prince of Jersey City is thinking about stepping down:
Jersey City's beleaguered state-appointed schools chief, Charles T. Epps Jr., told The Jersey Journal yesterday he's contemplating retirement.
"At my age, it's always on your mind," said Epps, who's 62. "I think about it every day."
The statement by Epps, who doubles as a state assemblyman for parts of Jersey City and all of Bayonne, follows weeks of bad publicity about a costly trip to England two years ago.
He made his comments yesterday just hours after the Journal held an editorial board meeting with four of the city school board's nine members.
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Methinks a Flim-Flam artist walks amongst us.
