Did Corzine cave in to Newark

The other day I posted on a column by Bob Braun and an companion article on $80 million in state aid for Newark that the State froze. The other day The Newark City Council and Sharpe James meet with the Governor at the Governors office link.

The question is did Corzine cave to James or not. Most believe that Corzine stood his ground as Council members promised that there would be civil disobedience or that they would go to jail or threatened legal action. Well, non of that happened and the message to the council was fairly clear, get your budget in and the State will review the requests for the $80 million in State aid.

So although the $80 million is still out there, corzine and the State made it clear that it wasn't going to be a slush fund for Sharpe James.

Mulshine misses the real point

In his zest to explain high gas prices and take a backhanded stab (again) at SUV's, link Paul Mulshine leaves his conservative roots and goes wildly off the reservation and misses the obvious point on who are the real gougers in the current oil mess. His figures show the real culprit of high gas taxes. Of the $2.92 per gallon that you pay, The State and Federal government get $.46. So after the cost of goods sold, which is $.54 cents for refining, $1.70 for the crude, the oil company makes $.22 which doesn't cover the SGA costs of marketing etc..

So who is the gavone here, the oil companies or your hard working government.
Instead of subpoenaing oil company records, why don't our elected representatives forego gas taxes?

Going.. Going...

For a guy that needs everyone to love him, this must hurt. It would have been so much better to make REAL cuts in the budget.

Only 35 percent of the voters surveyed said they approve of the way the freshman governor is handling his job. That's down from 43 percent last month, before Corzine recommended a new $30.9 billion budget that calls for $2 billion in higher sales, water, cigarette, alcohol and hospital taxes. And the number who disapprove of his performance shot up from 14 percent in January to 42 percent now link .

Grab your wallet

Grab your wallets, folks. Abbott heads back to the Supreme Court today.

The long-running battle over how much the state should pay for public school funding in Newark and other needy communities will land in the state Supreme Court again next week.

The court, which attempted to settle the school funding issue eight years ago, will hear arguments Tuesday in a dispute between the schools and the Corzine administration over hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid.

Gov. Jon Corzine's state budget essentially holds aid to the 32 "special needs" districts covered by the court's Abbott vs. Burke decision flat at $4.2 billion. This is a key element of Corzine's attempt to rein in state spending and balance the budget.

But lawyers for the poor schools claim in court papers that the proposal will force "severe and drastic cuts." They say the budget-balancing will translate into fired teachers, new school buildings idled because of a lack of staff, and lost opportunities for thousands of disadvantaged students.

Is Corzine different

Bob Braun has a column in the Ledger today that praise Corzine for freezing $80 million in state aid to Newark that sharp James was going to move to an agency that he controlled. Braun showed this as an example of how Corzine was a differnt Democratic governor. (link will be supplied when the Ledger provides it.)

On the same page there was this story.

Newark mayor, council to meet with Corzine
Newark Mayor Sharpe James and the nine-member City Council will meet with Gov. Jon Corzine in Trenton today to discuss $80 million the city tried to spend on redevelopment projects before the state halted the action.

The money has become a major issue in the city’s mayoral campaign, in which all council seats and the mayor’s office at stake May 9.

James, who also is a state senator, has accused Corzine’s administration of illegally meddling in the city’s affairs at the behest of James’ nemesis, mayoral candidate Cory Booker. James is not seeking re-election as mayor.

Should be interesting to see if our Governor is really a differnt sort of Governor.

Op/ed columnists should use facts.

Why is that a newspaper's op/ed columnist doesn't have to cite where they got their facts. Jon farmer, the other day, used this statement in his column.

Experts says prices may recede a bit as refineries crippled by Hurricane Katrina come back on line this summer and pump out more gasoline. But the days of $2 and below-a-gallon gasoline are -- barring a technological breakthrough still unforeseen -- likely to remain as much an artifact as nickel beer.

I'd love to know what expert told Farmer that prices would recede when Katrina refineries come back on line. I've seen the current price issue linked to the price per barrel and the MTBE conversion.

AAA officials said a few dozen gasoline stations between Virginia and New Jersey had closed in recent days as they converted from fuels mixed with methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, to gasoline mixed with ethanol, which burns cleaner link .

I think that the Ledger should make columnists like Farmer and Wood start backing up their statements with some fact.

A must read

For anyone that hasn't seen Ken Adams outstanding post on the Geovernor's budget proposal this is a must read. link

Perhaps someone from the Ledger will read it so we can stop the dumb puff pieces that they have been doing on Corzine and the budget.

A cesspool of corruption

On a nearly weekly basis someone is forced to step doewn from a post at UMDNJ because of corrupt or illegal behavior. Why has no one gone to jail? Report accuses UMDNJ dean of unethical activities

A top academic dean and a trustee of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey engaged in "unethical and potentially illegal" activities involving the misspending of thousands in public funds, according to a federal report scheduled for release this morning.

The findings by former Judge Herbert J. Stern, the federal monitor overseeing the embattled university, include allegations that R. Michael Gallagher, dean of UMDNJ’s School of Osteopathic Medicine near Camden, devised a corrupt accounting scheme to boost his annual bonus, according to two sources with knowledge of the report.

The report also accuses the trustee — Newark City Council President Donald Bradley — of steering UMDNJ into a real estate deal that benefited a campaign contributor.

Gallagher has already been forced to resign his post. Bradley is not seeking re-election to his South Ward council seat.

The report recounts other alleged outrages, including a $50 glass of Glenlivet whiskey, a leather laptop case for the dean’s wife and two nights in the Waldorf-Astoria — all billed to the medical school.

Stern is scheduled to deliver the document this morning to U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie and then release it to the public.

In a report released April 3, Stern said UMDNJ had become a "patronage pit" for senators, legislators and university trustees.

So voters are getting fed up

Voters in New Jersey only approved 53.4% of the school budgets presented. link

The 53.4 percent approval rate was among only five in the last 30 years that fell below the 60 percent mark. At the same time, just 15.7 percent of registered voters cast ballots statewide, a slight increase from last year.

In addition to the base budget votes, only 28 of 78 separate ballot questions for additional programs were approved, with lower class sizes and courtesy school busing likely to take the toughest hits, officials said.

Could it be that the voters are finally getting fed up? Nah, that would be asking for too much.

They finally got the big cheese at UMDNJ!

So, for all of the mess at UMDMJ, the best that prosecutors could do was this ?

Sayreville man indicted in theft of funds from UMDNJ
A 29-year-old Sayreville man was indicted today on charges of stealing $30,000 while working as a cashier in a patient billing department for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

A Middlesex County grand jury charged David Collymore with theft and official misconduct, contending he took the money in various amounts between Sept. 16 and Dec. 17, 2005, and deposited the funds in his credit card accounts to pay bills at restaurants in New York City and to pay for such items as clothing and furniture.

Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Judson Hamlin, who presented the case to the grand jury, said Collymore worked at a UMDNJ office in New Brunswick. His job involved reviewing the payment records of hospital patients and reimbursing people who used their credit cards to cover bills that later were paid to the hospital by health insurers, Hamlin said.

While processing the bills, Collymore, a cashier, used hospital funds to pay his personal credit card debts, the prosecuting attorney said.

Contributed by Jim O'Neill

Kieth Olberman actually reported this tonight

On MSNBC, Keith Olberman reported that Halliburton recieved a no bid contract to build American Concentration camps. The only link I could find to this story was this .

Logic, public school style

In Alexandria the school budget was voted down. A school board member that was re-elected used this logic to explain the budgets defeat .

Susan Luthringer, who won re- election in Alexandria, said she didn't think the failed budget necessarily reflected the voters' attitudes about school spending, but signaled more of a general displeasure with high property taxes in the state.

Money well spent.

What's your tax bracket?

An article in the Ledger today is practically gleeful as it informs us that Corzine paid $1.3 million in taxes on $11.8 million of income.

Last year, he paid federal taxes of $1.3 million on adjusted gross income of $11.8 million. His tax hit is probably significantly larger for 2005 because Corzine last year sold the final 400,000 shares he had retained in the stock of his former company, Goldman Sachs.

Sounds great until you realize that his tax bite is 11%. What's your tax bracket?

Tough words from the Op/Ed page

In the past two days the Ledger has taken a strong tone of voice in it's editorials. It is refreshing. Yesterday the editorial was about school elections

A sense of voter impotence also contributes to the apathy. A rejected budget goes to the municipal council, which can leave it unchanged or make cuts -- usual very minor ones. If the council opts for cuts and the board is unhappy, it can appeal to the state education commissioner. Voters have no further say.

It's time to take a serious look at school elections. Either move them to November and make the results binding -- just like any other election-- or scrap them.

Continuing the charade is unacceptable.

On Sunday the Ledger finally came to terms with the folly of it's previous stand on the Abbott decision.

The two topics most likely to rile civic-minded New Jerseyans are property taxes and Abbott schools. It is becoming more difficult for those who support statewide funding for impoverished schools, including this newspaper, to keep the two issues from becoming one contentious discussion.

School aid certainly will become the eye of an economic maelstrom if the state, particularly the Department of Education and the municipalities that are home to Abbott school districts don't institute reforms.

Amen!

Did anyone read Mulshine yesterday

Virtually anyone that takes a look at school spending in New Jersey realizes that the only way to stop the madness is to stand up to the State Supreme Court. I've called for it here and others have called for it on their blogs. Now Mulshine makes a strong argument for standing up to the court The governor shouldn't let the court govern.

How many others in other agencies are there?

outrageous!

A consultant who was paid almost $390,000 under a no-bid contract with the state's Schools Construction Corp. was fired yesterday, after a review of his contract found problems with how he was hired and monitored.

"As of the close of business (Monday), Allen is off the assignment," Scott Weiner, the corporation's transitional chief executive officer, said of the three-year consulting agreement with Allen Wahlberg.

Wahlberg, 72, has been collecting about $10,000 a month from the SCC since he was hired by the corporation's chief executive at the time, Al McNeill.

Excessive

In Winslow Township four teenage boys have been accused of plotting to kill other kids at their high school. According to the Ledger

The boys, between the ages of 14 and 16, were arrested Wednesday after police heard about the alleged plot from administrators at the school, where three of the teens are students. Authorities did not release their names because of their ages.

The police arrested the boys and charged them with some low level crimes so they could get them into family court and get them evaluated. So far so good. The authorities are acting in a reasonable manner. Then, for no discernable reason, the boys were charged with terrorism. Terrorism? they didn't even have weapons or access to weapons.

Authorities said the boys did not have any weapons to carry out the alleged plot.

So now, a law that was passed after September 11th in order to combat Islamic terrorists, is being used to fight American teenagers, with no weapons and who never acted out anything.

And people wonder why a conservative hates the Patriot Act and all other laws like it.

a surprising tax increase

Amongst the new sales tax items in the Governor's proposed budget is a new tax on bail bonds services. I wonder how Sen. Wayne Bryant (D-camdem) will vote on that.

The inquiry by the U.S. Attorney's Office centers on Sen. Wayne Bryant (D-Camden), whose committees approved significant additional funding for the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine in southern New Jersey, after he was hired there as a $38,220-a-year community affairs consultant.

At issue is whether Bryant sold his office to financially benefit his employer. The senator declined to discuss the allegations.

The interest in Bryant grows out of a widening federal examination of corruption at UMDNJ, which already has led to the resignations of several top administrators and, most recently, the dean at the osteopathic school where the senator worked.

First bury the poll. Then write a puff piece

What's with the Star Ledger's love affair with Jon Corzine? Yesterday they bury a story on a poll showing the Governor's budget was a disaster from a polling perspective and today they write a puff piece

After setting up a Web site to collect feedback on his March 21 budget speech, which called for $1.9 billion in higher taxes, Corzine received more than 230 e-mails. In true Jersey fashion, the senders were not shy in contributing to the, uh, frank discussion.

A review of the e-mails, with the names of the authors deleted, showed a wide range of responses, including die-hard Democrats calling for his head and Republicans sheepishly admitting admiration for the liberal Democrat.

Why doesn't the Ledger focus on how the courageous Governor has raised spending in the middle of a severe financial crisis? Why don't they admit that the Governor made no hard choices in this budget? Why don't they focus on how the Governor hid $6.5 billion in spending by borrowing for the transportation fund, costing future residents an addition $20 billion in interest 20 years from now? Ridiculous.

Poll shows Corzine budget not a hit

The Star Ledger thought that this story showing that 60+ percent of the people of New Jersey think that the Governor didn't cut enough and raised taxes too much belonged buried, on page 17 of the New Jersey section.

In the same poll, 44 percent of the public thinks Corzine's spend ing plan relies too much on tax increases, versus 36 percent who think he strikes the right balance. Fifty percent consider the budget unfair, versus 33 percent who view it as fair.

In another survey, Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind found that 61 percent say raising the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent is a bad idea. The sur vey found that just 42 percent have a favorable opinion of the governor, down from a previous poll finding of 50 percent before his March 21 budget address.

Even more disturbing for the governor, voters who now have a "very unfavorable" view of Corzine nearly doubled to 21 percent dur ing the past month.

and Corzine couldn't find waste and fraud

At UMDMJ

"The state's medical schools and its hospital became a hiring mill for senators, legislators, university trustees -- even the husband of a Newark councilwoman -- who used the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a patronage pipeline.

The harshly critical findings, in a report released yesterday by the federal monitor overseeing the university, also found a top administrator systematically abused his expense account, including the freewheeling use of hotel rooms after "late-night meetings" that never occurred, and the rental of an Alfa Romeo for a business trip.
link

I'll bet this type of abuse is going on all over the state.

Chicken Little Lives

When i was a kid, we would look at the cartoons in the paper and the nuttiest people were walking around in sackcloth with a sandwich board. Now we have the internet .