Finally! Despite the last-minute Air Force One shuttles between Washington, D.C. and Trenton, President Obama’s luster simply was not transferable to Jon Corzine. Nor was the third-person candidacy of Chris Daggett which, in the end, was unable to siphon off enough votes to prevent Chris Christie from snatching the golden ring of the New Jersey governorship.
I extend our newly elected governor the best of fortune in his new job. Nonetheless, I remain optimistically skeptical: Not because I don’t trust the man and his backers, but because, in the 33 years that I’ve been in Bridgewater, I’ve seen elected officials come and go into and out of Trenton, with no relief to the tax burden which continues to grow and to weigh down the common person.
Yesterday, CNN reported a poll which showed the top concerns of NJ citizens:
• 31%, The economy and jobs
• 26%, Property taxes
• 20%, Corruption
• 18%, Healthcare
Governor-elect Christopher Christie was outstanding in demonstrating how good he is at addressing corruption. He now needs to show us how good he is at fixing the first two concerns.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Christie Moves Ahead of Corzine
MONDAY POLL RESULTS. As of 12:30 PM today in its seven group poll-of-polls average, the Real Clear Politics web site showed Chris Christie leading with a 1.2 margin over New Jersey’s incumbent governor, Jon Corzine. Friday afternoon, that same poll average had both men in a statistical dead heat.
Stockton/Zogby has Corzine ahead by 1, and Monmouth/Gannett has him up by 2. The other five polls show Christie leading with a spread of from 1 to 3 points. (Quinnipiac, which previously had Corzine ahead by 3 on Friday, now has Christie up by 2. That’s a not-so-insignificant 5 point reversal for Corzine in just three days.)
The polling is still active and the results could swing either way.
HELP FROM WASHINGTON. Yesterday, President Barack Obama and Jon Corzine barnstormed two of New Jersey’s largest cities, Newark and Camden, pinpointing them both in a last-minute push to motivate voters in those burgs to become the tipping point for the incumbent’s reelection.
You’d think that the President would have larger responsibilities to attend to: Matters such as the problem of a U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan and the corrupt administration of that country’s president, Hamid Karzai. Or another issue such as helping to reconcile the incomprehensible 2000-page health-care bill in the U.S. House of Representatives with the Senate version. Or perhaps another minor point such as the condition of the U.S. economy.
But no, it was time to fuel Air Force One and head up to an annoying distraction in New Jersey. Why? The Obama administration’s real concern is that this state, like Virginia, has two critical governorships up for grabs and, if they both go Republican, the loss will be viewed as a specific indictment of Obama’s policies – that’s the playbook.
MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT!
Stockton/Zogby has Corzine ahead by 1, and Monmouth/Gannett has him up by 2. The other five polls show Christie leading with a spread of from 1 to 3 points. (Quinnipiac, which previously had Corzine ahead by 3 on Friday, now has Christie up by 2. That’s a not-so-insignificant 5 point reversal for Corzine in just three days.)
The polling is still active and the results could swing either way.
HELP FROM WASHINGTON. Yesterday, President Barack Obama and Jon Corzine barnstormed two of New Jersey’s largest cities, Newark and Camden, pinpointing them both in a last-minute push to motivate voters in those burgs to become the tipping point for the incumbent’s reelection.
You’d think that the President would have larger responsibilities to attend to: Matters such as the problem of a U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan and the corrupt administration of that country’s president, Hamid Karzai. Or another issue such as helping to reconcile the incomprehensible 2000-page health-care bill in the U.S. House of Representatives with the Senate version. Or perhaps another minor point such as the condition of the U.S. economy.
But no, it was time to fuel Air Force One and head up to an annoying distraction in New Jersey. Why? The Obama administration’s real concern is that this state, like Virginia, has two critical governorships up for grabs and, if they both go Republican, the loss will be viewed as a specific indictment of Obama’s policies – that’s the playbook.
MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT!
Friday, October 30, 2009
Chris Daggett: Corzine’s AMEX Card
In a six-poll average appearing on the Real Clear Politics web site as of Friday afternoon, Chris Christie and Jon Corzine are in a statistical dead heat. One of those six polls, Quinnipiac, shows Christie trailing Corzine by five points, while the Rasmussen poll has him ahead of Corzine by three. This could be a stunning turnaround for New Jersey’s incumbent governor.
Should it become a last-minute trend that holds through to Election Day, it won’t be due only to the personal purchasing power that previously helped Corzine gain a U.S. Senate seat and his first term as NJ governor.
If Jon Corzine wins a second term, there will be another even more compelling reason for victory: It will be the impact of Chris Daggett’s insertion into this race that could be the favorable tipping point for Corzine.
Chris Daggett never stood a chance at the golden ring from the beginning of his candidacy, but he has apparently struck a chord with enough voters so that he became a major distraction to Christie and a significant boost for Corzine, the only two contenders with any realistic chance of success.
Daggett’s promise to reduce property taxes by increasing the sales tax base is a 1977-style, Byrne-like, smoke-and-mirrors proposal presented to gullible voters: It is identical to the old thinking that establishing a New Jersey income tax would reduce property taxes.
If those protest voters don’t wake up, their fantasy will be replaced with the reality of another four years of the same.
When Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs after a fabulously successful career, he took with him the enormous purchasing power of a seemingly unlimited AMEX card. But his second term, if he makes it, will have come not solely from his financial resources: It will have resulted in large measure from something that he could never buy: the dilutive effect of a third-person spoiler, Chris Daggett.
Should it become a last-minute trend that holds through to Election Day, it won’t be due only to the personal purchasing power that previously helped Corzine gain a U.S. Senate seat and his first term as NJ governor.
If Jon Corzine wins a second term, there will be another even more compelling reason for victory: It will be the impact of Chris Daggett’s insertion into this race that could be the favorable tipping point for Corzine.
Chris Daggett never stood a chance at the golden ring from the beginning of his candidacy, but he has apparently struck a chord with enough voters so that he became a major distraction to Christie and a significant boost for Corzine, the only two contenders with any realistic chance of success.
Daggett’s promise to reduce property taxes by increasing the sales tax base is a 1977-style, Byrne-like, smoke-and-mirrors proposal presented to gullible voters: It is identical to the old thinking that establishing a New Jersey income tax would reduce property taxes.
If those protest voters don’t wake up, their fantasy will be replaced with the reality of another four years of the same.
When Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs after a fabulously successful career, he took with him the enormous purchasing power of a seemingly unlimited AMEX card. But his second term, if he makes it, will have come not solely from his financial resources: It will have resulted in large measure from something that he could never buy: the dilutive effect of a third-person spoiler, Chris Daggett.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Price of Democracy
I have to admit that I sometimes cannot understand why it is that Americans have to put up with the sort of extreme, stench-filled diatribes which bubble up from marginal groups such as those of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.
A handful of people from this group are now touring New Jersey, spreading their own brand of hatred for gays, Jews, and Catholics. Having busied themselves with stirring up the pot of prejudice in New Brunswick, Rutgers and other locations, they have announced that they will demonstrate at the funeral of the Rev. Edward Hinds, a Catholic priest from Chatham who was recently stabbed to death multiple times.
Their vile views are also leveled at mainline Protestants such as Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Baptists – and it doesn’t stop there.
The source of this group’s self-proclaimed authority for these homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic rants is, of course, God. They claim to have what no one else has: The inside track on the thinking of the Divine Source – disgusting.
A handful of people from this group are now touring New Jersey, spreading their own brand of hatred for gays, Jews, and Catholics. Having busied themselves with stirring up the pot of prejudice in New Brunswick, Rutgers and other locations, they have announced that they will demonstrate at the funeral of the Rev. Edward Hinds, a Catholic priest from Chatham who was recently stabbed to death multiple times.
Their vile views are also leveled at mainline Protestants such as Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Baptists – and it doesn’t stop there.
The source of this group’s self-proclaimed authority for these homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic rants is, of course, God. They claim to have what no one else has: The inside track on the thinking of the Divine Source – disgusting.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
What do You See When You Look Out the Window?
One of my favorite reading spots in Forbes magazine is the last page entitled “Thoughts on the Business of Life.” It always struck a chord with me because, after a whole batch of serious, well-written articles on economics and business, Forbes’ editors always insert a few aphorisms that make a person stop and think in another dimension.
The very last comment in the lower right-hand corner of the “Thoughts” page is always reserved for a pericope from Scripture. I like that: Some big, bad, aggressive NYC editorial types that are not afraid to go on record by reserving the last word in the magazine to the Good Book.
In one of those quotes, Larry Summers, former President of Harvard University and currently Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, reflects that:
“When I look out the window at my backyard, I can’t think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it’s green, it’s growing – but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten.”
Mr. Summers concludes with, “Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kind of things, I can ask lots of questions.”
Do you detect, as I do, a deep sense of imbalance and artificial bifurcation between those two statements? Here, presumably, is one of the brightest lights in the Obama string of luminaries telling the world that, when he looks out at nature, all he sees is a blank canvas – no matter how hard he tries. But put a few numbers and formulas in front of him, and the man’s mind starts to crank.
He says that he can’t come up with any relevant questions about the outdoors, questions that a mere child could pose such as, “Where does grass come from? Why is it green? Why is there earth underneath it? Why is the grass there?”
It reminds me that some of us, no matter how high our IQ might be are so internally oriented, that we fail to recognize the natural clues to something greater than ourselves, no matter how obvious the prompts. If an observation cannot be codified, bracketed within a formula, fed into a computer and the results analyzed, it holds no attraction.
No big deal, you might think. But Larry Summers is the man who, as Harvard President, addressed an audience of his peers, sincerely explaining why women don’t hold as many key posts as men "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions."
Summers explained that, among other factors, this has to do with "the different availability of aptitude at the high end.” By this not-so-cryptic phrase he meant that according to his research and analysis, more men than women have high IQ scores and that this, therefore, accounts for why fewer women hold high-level posts in science and engineering. A year after presenting his assumptions and conclusions, Summers resigned from Harvard.
This is the man who has the President’s ear on decisions that affect your economic future right here in Bridgewater, New Jersey. I wish that this expressive ivy-league-trained man would go out to the White House lawn one day soon, sit down under a warm sun, and try to conjure up a few meaningful questions about how his actions will have a personal impact on the lives of nearly 305 million Americans, actions that defy codification, statistical analysis, and definitive prognosis.
Note: You can find Mr. Summers’ statement in the November 2, 2009 edition of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands.
The very last comment in the lower right-hand corner of the “Thoughts” page is always reserved for a pericope from Scripture. I like that: Some big, bad, aggressive NYC editorial types that are not afraid to go on record by reserving the last word in the magazine to the Good Book.
In one of those quotes, Larry Summers, former President of Harvard University and currently Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, reflects that:
“When I look out the window at my backyard, I can’t think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it’s green, it’s growing – but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten.”
Mr. Summers concludes with, “Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kind of things, I can ask lots of questions.”
Do you detect, as I do, a deep sense of imbalance and artificial bifurcation between those two statements? Here, presumably, is one of the brightest lights in the Obama string of luminaries telling the world that, when he looks out at nature, all he sees is a blank canvas – no matter how hard he tries. But put a few numbers and formulas in front of him, and the man’s mind starts to crank.
He says that he can’t come up with any relevant questions about the outdoors, questions that a mere child could pose such as, “Where does grass come from? Why is it green? Why is there earth underneath it? Why is the grass there?”
It reminds me that some of us, no matter how high our IQ might be are so internally oriented, that we fail to recognize the natural clues to something greater than ourselves, no matter how obvious the prompts. If an observation cannot be codified, bracketed within a formula, fed into a computer and the results analyzed, it holds no attraction.
No big deal, you might think. But Larry Summers is the man who, as Harvard President, addressed an audience of his peers, sincerely explaining why women don’t hold as many key posts as men "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions."
Summers explained that, among other factors, this has to do with "the different availability of aptitude at the high end.” By this not-so-cryptic phrase he meant that according to his research and analysis, more men than women have high IQ scores and that this, therefore, accounts for why fewer women hold high-level posts in science and engineering. A year after presenting his assumptions and conclusions, Summers resigned from Harvard.
This is the man who has the President’s ear on decisions that affect your economic future right here in Bridgewater, New Jersey. I wish that this expressive ivy-league-trained man would go out to the White House lawn one day soon, sit down under a warm sun, and try to conjure up a few meaningful questions about how his actions will have a personal impact on the lives of nearly 305 million Americans, actions that defy codification, statistical analysis, and definitive prognosis.
Note: You can find Mr. Summers’ statement in the November 2, 2009 edition of Forbes magazine, now on newsstands.
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