Who has said the following in the past few weeks:

About the 0bama multi-billion dolllar stimulus scheme:

“We know some of this money is going to be wasted,” and “Some people are being scammed already.”

and while introducing NJ governor Jon Corzine at his re-election campaign kick-off:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States . . . ”

And at the Air Force Academy graduation, when a teleprompter was knocked over by a strong gust of wind:

“What am I gonna tell the president when I tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?”

If you answered Vice President Joe Biden, you win a free hair transplant for you (or a loved one).

And let’s not forget his statement not to fly for awhile during the swine flu epidemic.

Someone once said “BS” isn’t short for that stuff that bulls leave in a pasture after grazing. “BS” means “Biden Says”.

With 56% of the vote in, it’s:

Christie 109,492 55%
Lonegan 83,796 42%
Merkt 5,384 3%

AP has called it for Christie. They must figure given the remaining precincts that Lonegan has no shot to make up the 26,000 votes. Good try, Steve. Now let’s come together to defeat enemy #1, Jon Corzine.

With 34% of the vote in, it’s a bit tighter. Christie at 56% and Lonegan at 41%.

Oh, and if you care, Corzine has 80% of the primary vote.

Interesting that 121,000 votes cast so far in the GOP primary compared to about 75,000 in the democrat primary. Democrats made a big deal last year about the high turnout for their presidential primaries, saying it showed how motivated their base was for change. You could probably say the same thing about New Jersey. We need change in Trenton.

With 21% of the vote in, Chris Christie is at 57% and Steve Lonegan has 40% , with Rick Merkt getting the remaining 3%.

See the results here.

My wife and I were both undecided, but when we went into the voting both we both voted for Lonegan. I always vote for the more conservative candidate, and that’s Lonegan. However, I am comfortable that Chris Christie is a conservative. He’s no Christie Todd Whitman or Colin Powell. I think he was a bit harsh on Lonegan during the past month, but that’s the way politics is played.

I never vote based on electability. It’s pretty obvious that Lonegan would have a tougher fight against Corzine. But I don’t want to give up my core principles just to win an election. Jim Gearhart said so well this morning on 101.5, if you give up your principles to win, than really what have you won??

Jim at Parkway Rest Stop was like me, undecided, and he also went the Lonegan route. As did Ken Adams. Great minds think alike.

PolitickerNJ.com is pushing the idea that NJ governor Jon Corzine will run for re-election with a republican Lt. Governor, in particular Joan Verplanck. Ms. Verplanck is the President of the NJ Chamber of Commerce (see Corzine considering Chamber leader for LG and Sebelius and Schweitzer picked GOP running mates).

I’d be really surprised if Corzine goes with a republican. Corzine has had alot of conflicts with democrats in the legislature, and they’d be really ticked if he didn’t select a democrat. The lieutenant governor slot is a plum position, high profile with no responsibilities, and would be a perfect stepping stone for an ambitious democrat. Giving the slot to a republican would not go over too well.

I’ve got problems with the NJ Chamber of Commerce, which has sat on their collective behinds, twiddling their thumbs, while Corzine, Codey and Roberts destroy the business climate in this state via regulation and crippling taxes. But the NJCC is a bunch of lobbyists, and lobbyists need access to the Trenton power brokers. So they don’t say anything negative about those in power and they get all excited when Corzine throws them a few crumbs while lavishing tax dollars on the least productive.

I’m still leaning towards Anne Milgram for Corzine’s running mate. Unless Chris Christie picks her first.

The conventional wisdom is that New Jersey taxes are so high because this state has 566 cities, towns, townships, municipalities, boros, villages, etc. If only we could get the smaller towns to merge with other towns and cities, why then, our property taxes would magically drop.

Lots of discussion about this because LUARC is kicking into high gear. LUARC?? Why, of course, LUARC is the Local Unit Alignment Reorganization and Consolidation Commission, created in 2007 by the NJ legislature to “. . . recommend legislative changes which would encourage the more efficient operation of local government”.

Last week LUARC came out with a report singling out 40 small communities that should be merged out of existence. Many are “donut” towns, small towns that are totally or mostly encircled by another town. The most famous I know of is Morristown and Morris Township.

The initial 40 communities singled out by LUARC are concentrated in South Jersey. See the details at this Philly Inquirer article N.J. town mergers could start in 18 months. Candidates include: Medford Lakes and Medford Township; Riverton and Palmyra; Bordentown Township and Bordentown City; Pennsauken and Merchantville;Hi-Nella and Stratford.

The key word in the headline of the story is “could”. As of right now the mergers can’t be forced onto the towns, and so far nobody is rushing forward. Residents of Medford Lakes in Burlington county are so aroused that they are trying to recall the mayor who is pushing the idea of combining police forces. Medford Lakes (pop 4173 and area of 1.3 square miles) is the center of a donut with Medford Township (pop 22,253 and area of 40 square miles).

In New Jersey: An Extreme Example, the NY Times highlights the proposed merger between Corbin City (pop 468 and area of 9 square miles) in Atlantic County with nearby Upper Township (pop 11,363 and area of 68.5 square miles). Upper Township is in Cape May county, so Atlantic County would have to agree to give up Corbin City.

Another NY Times article A Wealth of Municipalities, and an Era of Hard Times talks about efforts in the tri-state area to consolidate. So far, lots of talk and very little action.

The last line from the article is a quote from NJ troublemaker, state assemblyman Reed Gusciora “We’ve tried everything to coax these communities to the altar . . . What we need now is a few shotgun weddings.” Good luck getting a majority of legislators to agree to that.

Combining recycling centers and sharing emergency dispatchers will only get you so much savings, and there already alot of towns sharing services and New Jersey property taxes are still going up. The big savings will be in eliminating teachers and police officers, and those two unions are the most powerful in the state. If two school districts merge, teachers from the lower paid district would get raises to match the salaries in the higher paid district.

And if big means more efficient, explain who New Jersey’s biggest cities (Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, Elizabeth) spend twice as much on schooling, emergency services and government as smaller towns, many of which have volunteer fireman and low paid town officials?

One area of saving is in the corruption tax, the negative effect on businesses from having to pay off so many officials to get anything done. Instead of greasing the palms of politicians from two or three towns, contractors will only have to hand over the cash filled envelopes to one crook. I guess that’s progress.

CNN has an article about the coming crisis to confront state budgets, and that’s the cost of pensions to retired state workers. The page with The public pension bomb actually is titled “New Jersey’s public pension bomb”. Yes, the Garden State is Exhibit A in how to bankrupt a state by overpromising benefits while at the same time underfunding the accounts to pay for it.

The article traces the beginning of the problem to 1992 and then governor Jim Florio’s Pension Revaluation Act of 1992, which used rosey assumptions to allow the state to underfund the pensions by almost $2 billion. Christie Whitman did the same thing a few years later with more phoney assumptions, but Florio and Whitman were amateurs compared to the master of pension malpractice, Jim McGrevey. And the 2001 decision to raise benefits by 9%, rushed through by acting governor Donnie DiFrancesco added over $4 billion to the long term liabilities.

The article gives current governor Jon Corzine credit for taking “baby steps” to reverse the tide, but even the modest reforms have caused the unions to go into full throated attack mode.

How to get out from this hole?? As the article notes, “The Tax Foundation says New Jersey charges the highest state and local taxes in the country, the highest residential and commercial property taxes, and some of the highest sin taxes in the nation on cigarettes and alcohol”. More taxes? The article suggests a massive bailout by the federal government. I’m not sure you can convince senators from small states that are well run that their citizens tax dollars should be used to fund the inflated pensions of workers in other states.

The other solution is a bankruptcy. Now that would be fun.

I thought this was a good list, You might be a chemical engineer if:.

(Well, I think it’s funny, since I am a chemical engineer).

I’ve actually done some of these things. I think I gave my son a scientific explanation for why the sky is blue, I have Dilbert comics on the board in my office, I have destroyed things to see how they work and I have used every button on my calculator.

I met a girl in college who had a cat named Schrödinger. Now that’s an engineer!!

“Throwing good money after bad”

My mother used to say that a lot when I was growing up. Well that and, “Yeah, if (fill in the blank) jumps off the George Washington Bridge, are you?”

But throwing good money after bad is a dead-on description for the multi-billion dollar project known as Xanadu. The temple to consumer spending excess being built in the New Jersey Meadowlands. A shopping mall that was supposed to open last year but is currently in a state of suspended animation due to funding problems and the economic meltdown.

Originally scheduled to open in November of 2008, but the newest opening date is “. . . sometime in 2010.” The NY Times has the gory details in At $2.3 Billion, This Mall Could Be Too Big to Fail.

Too big to fail?? When you hear that, make sure you’ve got your wallet in a secure place. I smell bail out.

You know it’s bad when you’re a governor and you’re profiled in the same article as New York state governor David Paterson. New Jersey governor Jon Corzine gets the honors in Tale of two governors. At least Paterson can point to the fact that he’s the accidental governor, only in office for a year or so due to the sexual proclivities of Elliot Spitzer. Corzine has only himself to blame for the budget debacle, though he’ll blame everything and everyone other than himself.

The article makes a claim I strongly disagree with. “. . . most political observers expect President Barack Obama to campaign for the governor as well.” I’d say if Corzine is still trailing by 10 points after Labor Day, 0bama will be able to find other things to do rather than be shown side by side with a losing candidate.

Even if you’ve never seen the sign, I’m sure most Jersey residents know about the slogan “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” that is displayed on one of the bridges near Trenton. At one time, Trenton was a manufacturing hub, supplying goods to the entire world.

No more. Trenton’s manufacturing base is gone, and instead it is home to the nastiest parasites in North America. Of course, I’m talking about the members of the state assembly and state senate.

So I thought of a new slogan to display on the bridge.

“Trenton Makes, The World Takes” should be:

Why is it that the New Jersey state government, led by alleged Wall Street wizard Jon Corzine, can’t figure out basic budgeting stuff, like costs and revenue?

I distinctly remember being told that the planned two day furloughs of state workers would save the state $35 million, $17.5 million per day. But according to this article in the APP press, the savings per day was recalculated to be $12.5 million and the final number being used is actually $8.1 million according to the Treasury department and it’s clueless leader David Rousseau.

Let’s not forget that Corzine and Rousseau were off by 40% in their estimate of state income tax receipts. They must be using a ouija board to determine budget figures.

Most of the budget “cuts” are actually not cuts, but deferring expenses into the 2009-2010 budget year. This will just dump the problem onto the next governor, who hopefully will not be Jon Corzine. Lawhawk at A Blog For All has the bogus numbers in Corzine Proposes Cuts By Shifting Costs To Next Year.

What’s the matter with New Jersey voters? It’s not that we’re overtaxed, and our government is run by lobbyists, government contractors and labor unions.

No, the problem is that we’re cranky. So says the NY Times in Voter Crankiness Still Bedevils Candidates.

And this inconvenient truth also seems to “bedevil” the political campaign consultants. This shouldn’t suprise anyone, since most consultants are out of state free agents who travel the country selling their overpriced “talent” to the highest bidder.

The article notes something that I have been saying for 6 years on this blog. “. . . voters here tend to be slightly less informed than those elsewhere . . .” It seems in many districts, the only information a voter cares about is if the letters “D” or “Dem” are next to a candidates name on the ballot. Perhaps if we were better informed we wouldn’t have this one party socialist state.

The Sunday Star-Ledger has a pretty even handed piece up today about Republican candidate for governor Steve Lonegan. Lonegan forces fellow Republican gubernatorial candidates to take notice.

Lonegan has a nice life story. And he’s rock-ribbed conservative who I think can make a case for conservatism in even a liberal state like New Jersey. A former furniture salesman with an MBA, he seems to think fast on his feet.

But there’s two problems with Lonegan.

First, he has a bit of a reputation as a gadfly. Crazy Uncle Stevie who will do anything to get attention. The Star-Ledger piece shows the other side, but I think people who follow politics think of him as a bit of a showman, and if he is the candidate he needs to get out there fast to counteract that image.

But the more serious problem is that he is the conservative outsider challenging the establishment candidate in the GOP primary, and I sense a repeat of 2001. The moderate candidate with all the party backing, Bob Franks, lost in the primary to the charismatic conservative outsider Bret Shundler. The party abandons Shundler in the general race and he gets trounced in the election. Good bye Bret, hello Governor Jim McGrevey and three years of corruption and sleaze. If Lonegan does beat Christie, expect the state GOP to do a repeat of 2001 and not lift a finger for Lonegan.

If you remember that 2001 race, most of the democrat ads played up the social issues, guns and abortion, to try to paint Shundler as the standard liberal caricature of a conservative. The media played along, as they have done for just about every NJ election I remember. They even tried labeling Christie Whitman as a right winger because she wasn’t pro-gun control. If they can talk about Whitman as a conservative without any shame, think about what will happen to Lonegan. And without any money to counteract the Corzine ATM funded campaign, he will have an uphill battle.

So, I’m still not sure who to vote for in June. In a primary, I won’t vote for the guy who I think has a better chance of winning even though I like the other guy better. And I have no problem with casting protest votes. In 1997 I voted for the libertarian candidate Murray Sabrin because I despised Whitman. And last year in the GOP presidential primary I voted for Mitt Romney even though McCain had the race locked up. This year, I can honestly say I’m undecided.

Headlines from last night and this morning:

Obama Set to Revive Military Commissions

White House aide resigns over N.Y. flyover

This appears to be a common White House tactic, release uncomfortable news on Friday night. The weekend is typically a slow news period, and by Monday there will be new stories to bump the Friday night releases to the bottom of the pile. 0bama has done it a few times during his first four months in office.

Oh, and see the post below concerning NJ Governor Jon Corzine’s plan to borrow $2 billion to get the state through the fiscal year. Also a Friday night news dump. Not exactly “Profiles in Courage” are these liberals??

update: Andy McCarthy at National Review has also noticed. See ” . . . this week’s Obama administration Embarrassing Friday Night News Dump . . . . “