Remind me again why we're supposed to support Democrats

Here in my little town in Outer Whitelandia, a populace that's been asleep for thirty years is finally waking up to the reality of the one-party rule that's been running the town for the last three decades. The primary intersection in town is a bottleneck every single day at rush hour. There are nights when it can take me twenty five minutes to go twenty miles, and another twenty minutes to go two. This intersection is in a residential neighborhood, but a small gas station on the corner has been grandfathered in, and there is a large catering hall on another corner, owned by a guy who has over the last decade been quietly buying up houses on the main drag and letting them fall apart. For the last five years, the first thing you see when you come into town is a house with boarded-up windows and a hole in the roof. There have been rumors that the catering hall puts up its undocumented workers in these hell houses, but they are just rumors.

Now the owner if the catering hall and the owner of the gas station have simultaneously come up with grand plans to turn the gas station into a Wawa-like convenience store/gas and diesel station complex and the dilapidated houses into a strip mall containing a CVS with a drive-thru, a hair salon, and a coffee shop -- while a quarter mile down the road, there is already a half-empty strip mall with plenty of parking on site that has a Rite-Aid, a hair salon, a Dunkin Donuts, and a bagel shop. And finally the citizenry has awakened, even though the local government refuses to allow the public to talk at the zoning board meetings that are supposed to be where people can be heard.

In 2008, the town held its first contested election in thirty years -- and the sheeple in this town voted back in the same people who had been giviing crony contracts to their friends for years. Part of the problem was that in New Jersey, we vote not office-by-office, but on a giant screen where each candidate is in a party's line. So if you tend to vote Republican, as most people in this town do, you are not going to jump around the ballot. It of course didn't help that the Democratic candidate, who had lived in town barely two years, was the brother of one of the biggest Democratic Party hacks in he state.

It's like that in Democratic Party politics. Not a month goes by when someone doesn't tell me to run for office in town, but believe me, you do not want to touch these people or play their game. Every two years, they either refuse to run a candidate to run for Congress against the odious teabagger Scott Garrett, who was a teabagger long before the Tea Party kooks even existed; or else they run a weak candidate and then refuse to support that candidate with money. The New Jersey State Democratic Party, like the natonal party has been under everyone except Howard Dean, is only interested in fighting battles it knows in advance it can win.

And so the stage is set for the travesty that happened in Trenton yesterday, where Governor Gasbag, Chris Christie, succeeded in getting bipartisan support in the state Assembly for a law to gut public worker benefits and remove their ability to collectively bargain, with the help of Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex), who had shepherded the bill through the state Senate on Monday.

Everyone knows that the state pension system is dramatically underfunded, after being stiffed for decades by governors of both parties, What most people don't understand is that the police, firefighters and teachers who receive these pensions also pay in. So when politicians decide to gut these benefits, it's money paid out to these workers that's stolen for other needs -- mostly to keep from having to raise taxes on the wealthiest people in the state.

If the Democrats on the national stage won't stand up for people who pay into Social Security and Medicare all their lives and are then told not to depend on it because they stole all the money; if Democrats won't stand up for the rights of all Americans to be the same under the law; if Democrats won't stand up for the rights of workers; then why on earth should we reward them with our votes?

We know what Republicans are -- greedy, venal, hateful, cold-hearted and devoid of empathy. Republicans will do what Republicans do. We know this. Our problem is not them; it is the Democrats -- the party that increasingly pisses down our backs and then tells us it's raining.

Hey Chris Christie -- you fucked up! Admit it!

As my state of residence reels from the draconian cuts ordered by our Bully-in-Chief, Chris Christie, it seems that a fuckup on the part of the office of former GOP Wonderboy Bret Schundler has cost us $400 million in education funding:

After making a high-profile bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education reform money, New Jersey fell three points short of receiving "Race to the Top" funding, in part because of an error by the Christie administration in the state’s application, records obtained by The Star-Ledger show.

One five-point question on the application asked for budget information comparing the 2008 and 2009 school years. However, the state submitted information comparing the current year to 2011.

That mistake cost the state 4.8 points. The state lost points in other areas as well, the records show.

In the end, New Jersey received 437.8 out of a possible 500 points, placing it 11th in the competition, just behind Ohio, which received $400 million and was the last state to receive funding. The winners of the $4.35 billion competition were announced today in Washington, D.C.

"New Jersey did not supply the 2008-2009 data as required and therefore forfeits the points," said the report from one of the federal reviewers scoring the competition.

But is either Chris Christie or Bret Schundler accepting responsibility for the error? Are they acknowledging that "The Buck Stops Here"? Hardly. In true Republican fashion, it's not the fault of those who submitted the application. No, it's Barack Obama's fault:

Gov. Chris Christie this morning acknowledged the state made a clerical error that blew its chance at winning $400 million in federal money for schools, but he blamed Obama administration bureaucrats for not giving New Jersey a chance to correct the mistake.

“This is the stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government and crazy about Washington,” Christie said at a news conference after an unrelated bill signing.

Christie slapped two thick three-ringed binders on the podium containing more than 1,000 pages of the state's “Race to the Top” application and appendices, noting that just one piece of paper contained the error.

“The first part of it is the mistake of putting the wrong piece of paper in," Christie said. "It drives people crazy and, believe me, I’m not thrilled about it. But the second part is, does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number.”

[snip]

“That’s the stuff the Obama administration should answer for. Are you guys just down there checking boxes like mindless drones, or are you thinking?” said Christie. “When the president comes back to New Jersey, he’s going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he’s depriving them of $400 million that this application earned.”

Obviously Chris Christie has never had to fill out a job application, or a grant application, or any other paperwork that gets fed into a giant maw of bureaucracy. When dealing with a large number of submissions, both government agencies AND corporations require absolute adherence to instructions. You don't get a pass because the dog peed on your application, or you got a flat tire, or any other lameass excuse. Do clerical mistakes help organizations evaluating funding applications of ANY kind weed out for elimination those that have them? Absolutely. But this is nothing new, and it's no Great Conspiracy by Barack Obama to deprive New Jersey of much-needed funding. It's just how these things work. At one point years ago I helped pack copies of a federal grant application into a cardboard box for shipping, knowing full well that for a variety of reasons having to do with the content, preparation, and finishing of the application, we were not going to get the grant. I turned out to be right, and I'm sure that the problems I saw with it had at least something to do with it.

The Republican Party likes to paint itself as the party of grownups, but let a Republican fuck up, and it's always point-the-finger-elsewhere time. Chris Christie's Education Department fucked up. It may have been an honest mistake. But it's a mistake just the same, and a costly one. An adult would stand up before the citizenry of his state and acknowledge that. But Chris Christie is not an adult. He is a schoolyard bully who just got tripped up by the dweeby kid whose lunch money he steals every day. And he doesn't like it one bit.

Fortunately, a press that has been in love with him since his inauguration isn't buying it.

Meanwhile, a state Senate that's been bullied around by this pantload since the beginning of the year wants to know what happened, whether this fuckup was somehow deliberate -- a way to keep money from flowing into New Jersey's education coffers so that Christie could continue his full-scale assault on the teachers' union:

Questions have been piling up all day, not the least of which is this: Is this incompetence on the part of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler's office - either by an individual or individuals, or as a culture of the way his office works? Or, did Governor Christie's administration treat this program and its opportunities as a political football, punting because they didn't get everything they wanted, throwing the game? Did they give this effort their best, or send in people with poor qualifications in leading public schooling?

Date and time has not yet been set but the hearing will be via the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Christie administration officials who will be called to appear before the panel include Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.

This isn't just conspiracy theorizing. Apparently there was an earlier draft, that Bret Schundler had in his possession, that had the correct information. So the question of whether the Christie Administration deliberately sabotaged the state's chance of obtaining funding that would water down his fatwa against the NJEA is a valid one.

Damn, he's good

I just got finished watching Barack Obama stumping for Jon Corzine here in NJ. If only he were as fired up about health care as he is about re-electing Corzine, because damn he's good on the stump.

We are in a bit of a pickle here in the Garden and Tank Farm state. We have a huge budget hole that started when Christine Todd Whitman decided to borrow-and-tax-cut her way into prominence, continued with her designated successor, Donald DiFrancesco, steamrolled under the disastrous Jim McGreevey, and the wonkish Jon Corzine has been able to do little to stop it.

Politics in New Jersey is among the most corrupt in the nation. Someone is always either under indictment or on trial or going to jail. Right now it's Democrats like former Bergen County Democratic Organization head Joe Ferriero, primarily because Democrats are in power. When Republicans are in power, it's Republicans. Corruption, graft, and kickbacks aren't about party affiliation here in NJ, they're endemic to the state.

Tomorrow night is a much-anticipated debate in my town among the Republican and Democratic candidates for mayor and council, with our town gadfly running as an independent. This will be our first contested election in three decades. Rumor has it that the incumbent Republicans, who are bankrolled by a wealthy military contractor who's all but sure to win a state Assembly seat, are terrified that the Democrats will get in, open the books, and see what's been going on. All I want to know is whether the no-show jobs and the crony contracts will stop and we will start actually getting something for our tax dollars. I'm planning to go; if nothing else it promises to be a "lively discussion."

Corzine is pretty unpopular here in New Jersey. Perhaps if he had Obama's dynamism, he wouldn't be so unpopular, particularly running as he is against a particularly odious specimen of Republican in Chris Christie. I don't know what the Republican Party was thinking, making him their standard-bearer, except that the only other candidate was the extreme wingnut xenophobe Steve Lonigan. Perhaps they thought that Christie would be New Jersey's Rudy Giuliani, with a similar reputation as a "crime-fighter." Unfortunately, Christie is a Bush-era prosecutor with Bush-era tendencies to be highly selective about his prosecutions, which tend to be exclusively against Democrats. It doesn't help Christie that his New York counterpart's BFF, Bernie Kerik, went to jail today for revealing sealed information before his trial.

It seems that Chris Christie may have his own Bernie Kerik in the form of Michele Brown:

When news broke in August that the former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, had lent $46,000 to a top aide in the federal prosecutor’s office, he said he was merely helping a friend in need. He also said the aide, Michele Brown, had done nothing to help his gubernatorial campaign.

ut interviews with federal law enforcement officials suggest that Ms. Brown used her position in two significant and possibly improper ways to try to aid Mr. Christie in his run for governor.

In March, when Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s campaign requested public records about Mr. Christie’s tenure as prosecutor, Ms. Brown interceded to oversee the responses to the inquiries, taking over for the staff member who normally oversaw Freedom of Information Act requests, according to federal law enforcement officials in Newark and Washington. The requested information included records about Mr. Christie’s travel and expenses, along with Ms. Brown’s travel records.

[snip]

In mid-June, when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors gathered to set a date for the arrests of more than 40 targets of a corruption and money-laundering probe, Ms. Brown alone argued for the arrests to be made before July 1. She later told colleagues that she wanted to ensure that the arrests occurred before Mr. Christie’s permanent successor took office, according to three federal law enforcement officials briefed on the conversation, presumably so that Mr. Christie would be given credit for the roundup.

The federal law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were barred from speaking on the record.

Ms. Brown declined to be interviewed for this article. In an e-mail message to The New York Times, she called the allegations “outrageous and inaccurate,” but declined to answer further questions. Through a spokesman, Mr. Christie stood by his earlier assertions that Ms. Brown had not assisted his campaign in any way.

[snip]

Allegations that Mr. Christie played politics as a prosecutor have dogged him; reports that he discussed a run for governor with Karl Rove in 2006 led Democrats to assert he had violated the Hatch Act, which forbids candidates from “testing the waters” for a run for office.

The possibility that Ms. Brown may have helped Mr. Christie’s campaign from inside the United States attorney’s office casts a new light on their relationship and on the prosecutor’s office. Federal law and Justice Department policy prohibit prosecutors from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

That's the problem with these law 'n' order guys -- they seem to think that they're somehow special, and the laws don't apply to them. Christie has has been in six accidents and was cited 13 times for moving violations since 1985. Yes, that's a long time, but since 1973 I have been in only TWO accidents, neither of them my fault, and NEVER been cited for moving violations.

Christie is in the unenviable position of many Republicans living in states where the majority of the population is not insane: he has to ingratiate himself with the lunatics of his party and still try to appeal with his more moderate constituents. In perhaps his biggest gaffe, he has advocated allowing insurance companies to refuse to cover mammograms, especially for young women, because a young woman with breast cancer is "an exception." I'm sure that Rochelle Shoretz, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28, doesn't feel like "an exception."

Here in New Jersey, we pay the highest property taxes in the nation, an "honor" we've had for decades, under both Republican and Democratic governance. A good chunk of this is due to the rampant corruption that infects both parties. Another good chunk is home rule, which results in little fiefdoms like my hometown, regarded as piggybanks for the business buddies of the people who run them. And a chunk is because New Jersey receives less per capita back from the Federal government than any other state in the country. Here in my Congressional district, our Congressman Scott Garrett is too busy showing what an ideological purist he is to vote for anything that might actually help his constituents.

It remains to be seen whether Barack Obama can bring disaffected Democrats out on November 3. People tend not to come out to vote when they aren't thrilled with the available candidate(s). But as ineffective as Corzine may have been so far, a Chris Christie governorship promises to be nasty, brutish, and unfortunately, long.

Now we know who the Scott Garrett voters are

The South makes an easy target for progressives these days, what with Mark Sanford's escapades, and the lunatic asylum that is the state of Florida. But while I was in Berlin, there was a "pot, kettle" moment that I missed, when Public Policy Polling released the results of a survey which showed that almost one in five New Jersey conservatives is at least inclined to believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

Here in Middle Whitelandia, where voters are getting ready to express their disgust with the council's long refusal to deal with our corrupt, alcoholic ex-mayor by electing a member from that very same council to be the new mayor, I know there are pockets of Christofascist Zombieism, given the preponderance of "John 3:16" signs that show up on lawns now more often than contractor signs. But while we like to pride ourselves here in the Land of Blueberries And Tank Farms on being at least marginally less crazy than our southern brethren, in those pockets lies some first-class lunacy:

Do you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ?
If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If you’re not
sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 8%
No................................................................... 79%
Not Sure.......................................................... 13%

Do you think Barack Obama was born in the
United States? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 64%
No................................................................... 21%
Not Sure.......................................................... 16%

Do you think the federal government should be
eliminated? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 6%
No................................................................... 83%
Not Sure.......................................................... 11%

Do you think that public education should be
eliminated? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2. If
you’re not sure, press 3.
Yes ................................................................. 5%
No................................................................... 90%
Not Sure.......................................................... 5%

The Obama birthplace question doesn't tabulate for those who do not know that Hawaii is a state, but I'm not sure that would make a whole lot of difference. But however small the lunatic numbers seem to be, the idea that one in ten New Jerseyans either favors or is open to the idea that public education should be eliminated, that one in six either favors or is open to the idea of eliminating the federal government entirely, and that about one in five thinks Obama is the Antichrist shows that Teh Crazy is not limited to the parts of the country south of the Mason-Dixon line.

And this fuckwad is likely to be the next Governor of New Jersey

Yes, let's not cover mammograms for young women with a family history of early-onset breast cancer, because it's "an exception":

And let's not cover testicular cancer either, because it's "an exception."

Look, I know that Jon Corzine has been ineffectual and unable or unwilling or not interested in reining in the rampant corruption that is endemic to the state Democratic Party. But I don't see how nominating a heartless ghoul like the pantload that is Chris Christie is going to solve anything.

(UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler talks about her own experience as "an exception" in the current health care system.)

Chris Christie and Karl Rove - Perfect together

The Republicans thought they were getting a straight-arrow, law 'n' order prosecutor when they decided that Chris Christie was their man. I wonder how much even New Jerseyans who think Jon Corzine has done a crappy job want to elect one of Karl Rove's boys to the governorship:

ew documents about Karl Rove's involvement in the U.S. Attorney firing scandal have the potential to create ripples in the 2009 gubernatorial race in New Jersey.

In an on-the-record interview with the House Judiciary Committee on July 7, 2009, the former Bush strategist acknowledged that he had held several conversations with current GOP candidate Chris Christie over the course of several years regarding the possibility of running for the governor's chair.

Christie, Rove said, was interested in mounting a bid and "asked me questions about who -- who were good people that knew about running for governor that he could talk to."

The admission ties the former New Jersey-based U.S. attorney even further to the Bush administration at a time when his election opponent, Gov. Jon Corzine, has attempted repeatedly to push that connection. It also raises questions as to how apolitical Christie was in his prior job.

A rare reason to be proud of New Jersey

New Jersey: America's laughingstock. We have the Turnpike, the tank farms in Elizabeth, the Molly Pitcher Service Area, the Flagship, Lucy the Elephant, the strip club that turned into the Bada Bing on The Sopranos, actual places called "pork stores", and the Bergen Mall, a quaint old 1950's mall that is alas being metamorphosed into yet another of those ersatz "Towne Centers".

But despite the corrupt politicians and Camden and high property taxes and weakening job base and the other things that make life in New Jersey a daily trial, at last we have something in which we can take pride: We are one of the few states to recognize that killing people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong -- is wrong.

Is New Jersey the Michigan of tomorrow?

Edward McClelland writes in Salon about the long, protracted death of his home state, Michigan:

The UAW strike was just one distressing headline in a week of bad economic news for Michigan. As usual, the state has the nation's highest unemployment rate -- 7.2 percent. (In 2005, it was the only state not hit by a hurricane to lose jobs. It regularly wins United Van Lines' title of most-fled state, and the state of Wyoming put up a billboard outside Flint to lure workers west. That's a reversal of Henry Ford's old practice of sending his agents to wander the South handing out free one-way train tickets to Detroit.) On Friday, thousands of state employees will be told whether to report to work next week. Thanks to obstinate Republicans in the state Legislature and an ineffectual Democratic governor, Michigan may not meet its Oct. 1 budget deadline. The governor wants to raise taxes. Republican legislators want to freeze school funding and cut social services. If they can't agree soon, the state government will shut down. Drivers have been warned to renew their license plates now. The state police won't patrol the roads, and even the casinos will close.

How did the state that Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the Arsenal of Democracy" fall on such hard times? By clinging too hard to that title, is how. Michigan is hopelessly attached to the 20th century. It's not just the UAW with its longing for graduation-to-grandparent job promises. The Big Three have never gotten over the idea of muscular American cars ruling the highways. The SUV -- pumped-up descendant of the Fleetwood and the Electra -- was the automotive status symbol of the 1990s, so profitable that Detroit turned up its nose when Japanese automakers introduced hybrid cars.

"Hybrids are an interesting curiosity," then-GM chairman Robert Lutz said in 2004. "But do they make sense at $1.50 a gallon? No, they do not."

This year, with gas at $3 a gallon, GM is introducing a flex-fuel vehicle called the Volt, which can run on electricity, biodiesel, E85 or gasoline. But by waiting so long, GM yielded the title of environmentally friendly automaker to Toyota. The Prius will always be the hybrid car.

Detroit made the same mistake in the 1970s. It was too late getting into the small-car market, and the efforts it turned out were junk. My factory-town DNA tells me that buying American is a patriotic duty (as did the graffito "Assholes Buy Jap Cars" that I once saw painted on an overpass near Flint), so I suffered through the Chevy Chevette, the Ford Escort and the Plymouth Volare. I think I abandoned them all on rural roads, with blown head gaskets. My Ford Focus runs like a dream, but it can't seem to compete with the Corolla. This year, Toyota will become the biggest-selling automaker in the world.

When I think of Detroit's stubborn self-image as "the Motor City," I think of the Boll Weevil Monument in Enterprise, Ala. Enterprise was a town that grew cotton, and no other crop. After boll weevils struck, the farmers thought their livelihood was over. Then they started planting other crops, such as peanuts, and prospered more than ever.

Michigan did not become great because of the auto industry. The auto industry became great because of a Michigander, Henry Ford. The state still produces creative people. Google founder Larry Page, a Ford of the 21st century, grew up in East Lansing, and studied at the University of Michigan, whose main function seems to be giving young Michiganders the credentials to get the hell out of Michigan. Page went to California, but as a sop to his home state, Google is opening a 1,000-employee office in Ann Arbor.

(I've moved back to Michigan three times since college. My last attempt lasted a year -- until I was laid off. I now live on the North Side of Chicago, which is so crowded with my fellow economic refugees that we call it "Michago.")

I can only hope Google Ann Arbor is the beginning of a post-industrial era for Michigan. The picketers in the UAW's two-day strike were mostly gray-haired, protecting jobs and benefits they've held for years. Like the music of Bob Seger -- who celebrated Michigan's glory days with "Makin' Thunderbirds," "Night Moves" and, fittingly, "Back in '72," -- auto work belongs to the baby boom generation. GM has been culling them as quickly as possible, buying out 35,000 last year.

They're not being replaced with younger workers. My generation never heard the promise. We never counted on a career in the shop. If we have a mission, it's finding Michigan a new industry, and a new image, that take it beyond the automobile.

The dependence of an entire state on a single industry -- any industry -- is a huge mistake. Michigan is suffering, not because of "greedy auto workers", but because of decades of boneheaded decisions by Big Three executives, who continued to disgorge gas guzzling V-8 engines during the oil crunch of the 1970's, and continued to disgorge ever-more-mammoth SUVs as gasoline climed to $3.00/gallon and upwards.

It's all well and good that Larry Page is throwing a life preserver at his home state by opening a Google office there, but no single industry can save a state.

I read about Michigan and then I think about New Jersey. With less return on our federal dollar than any state in the country, and with a mammoth debt left to us by the fiscal mismanagement of Christine Todd Whitman, her successor Donald DiFrancesco, and the hapless and troubled Jim McGreevey, it now falls on a former Goldman Sachs executive, Jon Corzine, to try to sort out the mess in a state whose citizens seem unwilling to accept the pain necessary to get us out of it.

It turns out that the state pension fund has been hopelessly mismanaged for the last fifteen years and now has a deficit of $56 billion, which is going to have to be made up somehow. State employment is increasing, property taxes are skyrocketing (mind have gone up $300-$500/year every year since we bought our house in 1996), and not even Corzine has been able to make a dent in cleaning up the mess because of an intransigent state legislature unwilling to make hard choices.

If Michigan is the Automobile State, New Jersey is the Pharmaceutical State. Attempts are being made to make the state a center for stem cell research, but pharmaceutical jobs are heading south. The combination of high taxes and debt are stifling both business and residents alike. And no one in Trenton seems to have a clue what to do about it. Selling state roads is just not going to cut it. Now it seems taxpayers are going to have to bail out a failed golf/resort project in the Meadowlands.

As long as New York remains a world cultural and financial center, it may produce enough jobs to keep New Jersey limping along for a while. But New Jersey residents should look very carefully at Michigan and think about how dependent we've been on Big Pharma, noting carefully every time a pharmaceutical company moves or expands operations in the southern states. Because for those of us stuck here because of family, or because our age makes finding new jobs in another location unlikely, the future of this state looks bleak indeed.