Looking at the news, seems like I came out of the storm OK. The DynamoBuzz mansion is in beautiful central New Jersey, about a half mile off route 22 and not too far from Bridgewater. It didn’t start snowing until about 11:30 PM last night, and it looks like we got 4 to 6 inches. I just finished shoveling (with a little help from Liliana) and it was nothing really. A very dry light snow, good for skiing but lousy for snowball fights, snowmen and igloos. But the winter isn’t over. Maybe the next storm will be better.

Haiti??

NO.

0bama is going to Massachusetts this weekend to try to save the sinking campaign of democrat senate candidate Martha Coakley (Obama to Campaign for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts). Her campaign has been a total fiasco, a disaster of historic proportions that couldn’t come at a worse time for democrats or 0bama.

If you remember, 0bama traveled several times to New Jersey to campaign for democrat incumbent governor Jon Corzine, including two rallies just 48 hours before election day. How did that election turn out ????

The Star-Ledger editorial:

N.J.’s gay marriage vote: Three spineless senators abstain

Picking on NJ state senators Steve Sweeney, Paul Sarlo and James Beach for abstaining actually misses the main point. The whole lame duck session idea is hatched by spineless politicians to allow them to ram through unpopular bills and put them into law before a new legislature and governor is seated.

It’s a disgracefull way to make law, and it should be abolished. Instead liberals are using these last few days to try to rush through gay marriage, medical marijuana and in-state tuition at state colleges for illegal aliens. That’s spineless, that’s what cowards do, try to act when they hope nobody is looking and they won’t be held accountable.

The true spineless ones are senate president Senator Dick Codey, who could have put this up for a vote anytime in the past two years, and NJ governor Jon Corzine who said he did not want gay marriage debated while he was running for re-election. Oh, and put the spineless tag on assembly leader Joe Roberts, who pulled the gay marriage bill off the floor because he wanted the senate to go first.

If this is such a great idea, it should have been brought up for a vote earlier in the year. It’s not like they were busy doing anything else, like trying to reign in spending or cut property taxes.

Columnist Mark Steyn sticks it to the TSA, Newark Airport security and NJ senator Frank Lautenberg in Crack TSA Manhunt Corners National Security Threat.

If you haven’t heard, they arrested the guy who last week snuck through airport security at Newark Airport and caused a massive flight upset and airport lockdown. The perp was 28 year old Rutgers grad student Haisong Jiang who was arrested at his Piscataway townhouse and charged with tresspassing, something that isn’t even technically a crime. It’s considered a disorderly persons-type violation that will probably result in a small fine and maybe some community service. And Lautenberg is not happy with that, he wants the guy indicted and sent to Rahway to break rocks.

As Steyn points out in his piece, the guy was just going to give his girlfriend a last minute hug before her trip to LA. The real criminals are the security personnel at Newark Airport who did their best Keystone Cops/Marx Brothers/Three Stooges impersonation in response to the inadvertent security breech.

Oh, and the guard who was in charge of the security at the gate is suspended, but his union is sticking up for him. Another reason to oppose mass unionization of TSA employees.

In the race for Ted Kennedy’s old senate seat in the people’s republic of Massachusetts, you have this latest poll:

Buoyed by a huge advantage with independents and relative disinterest from Democratic voters in the state, Republican Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 48-47.

Corzine gets trounced in his re-election bid for NJ governor, and two months later a democrat woman is in trouble for a senate race in Massachusetts??

And what is the democrat response?? Send in Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton to visit Mass. to stump for Coakley.

If I remember correctly, Bill and Hillary came to New Jersey to campaign for Jon Corzine. As did Joe Biden and Barrack 0bama. Didn’t help Corzine too much, did it??

Aerosmith is still popular in Massachusetts, maybe they can campaign for Coakley like Jon Bon Jovi did for Corzine. But I read somewhere that Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry is a gun toting right winger, so maybe they can count on J. Geils.

From Friday’s headlines:

Other bloggers have noticed the same thing. It appears to me that the economic plan for 2010 is for 0bama to tell everyone the economy is doing fine and then dismiss any bad economic news as “unexpected”. Sort of like Alfred E. Neuman and “What, Me Worry??”

NY Times television reporter Neil Genzlinger does the impossible, and that’s to mount a defense of the MTV reality TV show “Jersey Shore”. In Surf, Skin and Jersey. What’s Not to Love? Neil gives a half-hearted tounge-in-cheek case for the popularity of the show.

I like reason #2, MAYBE ‘JERSEY SHORE’ WILL FINALLY KILL OFF THE KARDASHIANS.

As I stated earlier, my main complaint about the show is you have a bunch of 20-somethings acting like teenagers. I did a lot of stupid stuff down the shore when I was a kid, but I was 17. Two of the guys on this show are 27-28 years old.

First it was the tech stock bubble from 2000, taking hundreds of billions in shareholder equity from stock prices that were totally divorced from reality. Then there was the real estate bubble that drained trillions from homeowner equity, cut housing prices in half and wiped out the housing construction industry.

The next bubble that will (hopefully) pop is the college tuition bubble.

As this article from today’s Washington Post notes, ” . . Since 1980, the average cost of tuition and room and board has grown by a staggering 121 percent while median household income has risen a mere 18 percent . . . ” The credit crunch, housing crash and cuts to state colleges have resulted in a toxic mix of fianances for the upcoming college class of 2014.

How high can these prices go? This list from CNN of the top 10 most expensive colleges (one year of tuition, room and board and fees):

1. Sarah Lawrence, $55,788
2. Georgetown, $52,161
3. NYU, $51,993
4. George Washington, $51,775
5. Johns Hopkins, $51,690
6. Columbia, $51,544
7. Wesleyan, $51,432
8. Trinity College, $51,400
9. Washington University, (St. Louis), $51,539
10. (TIE) Bates College and Vassar, $51,300

My alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, must have just missed the list, checking it at $50,310 for a year.

Neither of my parents graduated high school. My father drove a fuel oil truck and my mother worked in the office of an electrical supply company. Yet between grants and loans I was able to complete a 4 year degree at RPI back when tuition and fees were about $14,000 a year. I graduated with a total of $9000 in loans, and I remember sitting there thinking how the heck am I going to pay that??

Now?? My wife and I are both college graduates, yet how the heck can I afford to send my kids to a college for $50-$60,000 a year?? These costs are totally out of whack with reality.

I remember senior year in college when students at RPI were complained about tuition, which in 1982 was about $8900. The dean reminded us of the equation to use for engineering students: 4 years of tuition equals one year of pay, which was true. Four years at $8900 a year was about $35,600 which at the time was the starting salary for an engineering major. But tuition for 2009 is now $30,000 and I don’t think engineers are pulling down starting salaries of $120,000. Tution has more than tripled in 25 years, yet starting salaries have not even doubled.

The colleges will say that the price is deceptive, that with financial aid the actual costs are much less. Well then how come there are kids graduating with $40 or $50,000 in loans??

UPDATE: I see that Instapundit picked up on the same theme. Maybe I’m onto something??

During the first New Jersey gubernatorial debate, Republican Chris Christie pointed out that New Jersey was losing residents as people got fed up with the high taxes and high cost of living. Governor Jon Corzine then made the outlandish statement that it wasn’t true, New Jersey was actually gaining population. I laughed at my computer monitor when I heard that one, I yelled “BS!”

Well CNN has posted the statistics, and New Jersey had a net population loss of over 31,000 in this past year.

The top 6 losing states for the year June-30-2008 to June-30-2009:

1. California, -98,798
2. New York, -98,178
3. Michigan, -87,339
4. Illinois, -48,249
5. Ohio, -36,278
6. New Jersey, -31,690

In 2006, the first year of the Corzine reign, the number was worse, a net loss of 77,000.

It would have been worse for these states, except that the collapse of the housing market made it tougher to move since you had to sell your overpriced California pad in order to get out of the state.

Oh, and for the decade New York lost an incredible 1,686,583 residents. I bet you that even though the state population declined, the number of New York government employees went up big time.

All of this matters because census is used to determine the number of seats in the US House of Representatives. Look for New York and New Jersey to lose seats in the reapportionment.

• Suspect Charged in Airline Bombing Attempt. Let me get this straight. This is a single guy flying alone. He pays cash for his ticket. His visa says he’s going on vacation but he doesn’t check any bags. His name is on a terrorist watch list. And his dad notified the authorities that he was concerned about his son’s jihadist tendencies. I thought this was the kind of guy who is supposed to be taken aside and given a detailed interrogation (and a cavity search?). Instead he waltzed through security and nearly takes down an airplane with nearly 300 passengers. This is what several hundred billion dollars in security buys??
• Boom decade for raises in Atlantic City. Yeah, the casinos have been taking in less money for the past two years compared to the boom years. And Atlantic City schools are amongst the worst. And most of the city west of the Boardwalk is crime ridden. But city employees have done great!! The city has an incredible headcount of 1500 government employees, and the salaries from 2000 to 2009 increased 60-70%. Any city employee who is given a city issued pager or cellphone gets $50 a week for being on call. There are raises on top of increases in pay scales. And the city is facing a $35 million dollar deficit next year. Must be Christie Whitman’s fault.

  How bad are the casinos doing? Atlantic City’s casinos revenue for November 2009 was down 13.4 percent compared with the same month a year ago. And November 2008 was an awful month, the first full month of economic meltdown. The city is doomed, and unfortunately a lot more money will be wasted as it goes down.

• New Jersey Lawmakers Object to ‘Jersey Shore’ . They mean the MTV show, not the region of the state. Hey, I used to go down the shore when I was a teenager and do stupid stuff. But that’s the thing, I was a teenager. Two of the guys on this MTV show are 27-28 years old. Time to grow up guys, and get a real job and move out of your mommy’s house.

Well, this is my first try at embedding a YouTube video at DynamoBuzz. This is from the Christmas Eve 2009 service at Stonecrest Church in Warren NJ. The little girl in the white dress is Liliana. She has a speaking part at the beginning, and again at the end of the song.

I made it through another Christmas. I find the stress level rises to new heights during the Christmas season. Between work, school, shopping, kids activities, cooking and cleaning there’s barely anytime to sit back and enjoy the season. It was much simpler when I was 10 years old.

Merry Christmas to all from Daniel, Allison and Liliana and my wife and me.

And just a little reminder of what Christmas is all about (think Charlie Brown Christmas special):

Am I the only person to see a common theme in all these recent stories about the economy??

Consumer Sentiment Index For December Unexpectedly Revised Downward

New Home Sales Unexpectedly Show Steep Drop In November

New U.S. Jobless Claims Jump Unexpectedly

US home builder sentiment unexpectedly ebbs in Dec

Economy Watch: New jobless claims unexpectedly rise

Service sector shrinks unexpectedly in Nov.

It seems to me the ruling class feels that if they just keep on saying the economy is doing fine and dismiss all the bad news as “unexpected” then all the common folk will think that happy days are here again.

When does the unexpected become the expected??

“Every problem in New Jersey is driven by property taxes . . . ”

So says democrat NJ Assemblyman Lou Greenwald in Pension Funds and Property Taxes Plague NJ. Greenwald also points to the pension anchor tied around the ankles of NJ taxpayers as they try to swim to the shore. Greenwald singles out the 55 year old retirement age for state workers as having a “crippling effect”.

Greenwald wants to tackle some of the labor problems at the negotiating table (good thing) but he also wants to increase tolls and raise the gas tax (bad thing). But at least he sounds like he’s willing to deal.

I don’t know if Greenwald and newly elected NJ senate president Stephen Sweeney are just blowing smoke, but if they are serious governor elect Chris Christie may have a short lived opportunity at the beginning of his term to really tackle the state government employee beast that is a huge contributing factor to the long term structural budgetary problems with this state.

Christie needs to go for it, fast and hard. I think the taxpayers would be on his side. Dissenters would be the unions and the editorial pages at the Star-Ledger and the Bergen Record, but as we saw in the elections a few weeks ago, that’s not enough.

No snow yet for this month, and the weather last weekend was really nice. Perfect for procrastinators like myself who have not done much leaf raking. I raked up about 8 bags worth around Halloween, but that was it until last weekend. I gathered up another 15 bags worth, and there is probably another 5 or 6 bags full to finish up.

Luckily I had an assistant to help.

And what’s the story with all the acorns?? I found so many that I thought someone had dumped a barrel full on my lawn as a joke. I’ve heard that oaks will drop a lot of acorns ahead of a bad winter, but then someone else said it’s a sign of a mild winter. Well, one theory will be proven correct.

TV chef Bobby Flay does a taste tour of New Jersey burger joints in Let’s Give a Hand to Sliders. The Food Network star visited The White Rose in Linden and The White Manna in Hackensack and of course gives White Castle some credit for the mini-burgers.

Of course, the rich and haughty in Manhattan can ruin anything. Flay visits the restaurant at the Four Season’s Hotel where you can get a pair of sliders for $38. Yeah, it’s Kobe beef, truffle oil, and foie gras, but I guess fries are extra.

And just an aside, I don’t remember the term “sliders” used that much in New Jersey when I was a kid. It seems to be a new term, maybe imported from the midwest. I remember meeting some Chicago guys who talked about driving over the border into Wisconsin to get sliders at White Castle.

I was in the store the other night and saw a kit with a tray and a press with 12 compartments to turn a pound or so of ground beef into a dozen little square burgers. I know what I want for Christmas!!

With 97% of the precincts reporting, it looks like a solid 5% victory, almost 110,000 vote margin.

Christie, Chris GOP 1,105,236 49%
Corzine, Jon (i) Dem 999,532 44%
Daggett, Christopher Ind 124,069 6%

Christie will get less votes than Corzine got in 2005. Looks like the vote total will be about the same.

The lieutenant governor-elect of New Jersey, Kim Guadagno, is speaking right now. It’s about 11:10PM Do I detect a bit of Jersey accent, surprising since I think she’s from Iowa.

She’s introducing Chris Christie . . . and they’re playing “Born to Run”!! Springsteen must be spitting up his herbal tea. Hopefully after the speech, they’ll play some Bon Jovi!! It’s My Life??

NJN is showing democrat lieutenant governor candidate Loretta Weinberg giving an introduction . . Yes, it’s Corzine, about to conceed. The clock shows 10:55PM. It’s officially over.

Corzine’s speech was classy, no partisan bomb throwing. Actually gracious. Considering this is first election loss ever, he’s handling it well.

(I have NJ101.5 on the radio, and NJN streaming on my laptop. NJ101.5 is on a delay, about 7-8 seconds behind.)

At 10:31PM with 87% of the precincts reporting:

Christie, Chris GOP 986,937 49%
Corzine, Jon (i) Dem 894,376 45%
Daggett, Christopher Ind 109,093 5%

Big news out of New York City. Mike Bloomberg is in a dogfight, up only by 3% against democrat Bill Thompson. Only leading by 24,000 votes out of 900,000 counted so far.

UPDATE:
With 90% in, it’s still 49% to 45%

Christie, Chris GOP 1,015,179
Corzine, Jon (i) Dem 924,151
Daggett, Christopher Ind 112,023

Christie is winning Middlesex county with about half the vote in.

Oh, and NJ101.5 just announced that AP is calling the race for Chris Christie.