The Washington Times is reporting that the US Senate resolution honoring Bruce Springsteen was blocked due to a feud involving New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg. A Capitol Hill newspaper says Georgia senator Saxby Chamblis was the one looking for revenge against Senator Nasty. Chamblis denies it.

If true, this is just one more example of how New Jersey’s senators are perhaps the most powerless, useless representatives for any state in Congress. No wonder New Jersey gets the short end of the stick in Washington. Oklahoma freshman Senator Tom Coburn was able to get a resolution passed for “American Idol” winner Carrie Underwood but New Jersey’s senators couldn’t do the same for Springsteen. Lautenberg might be the most disliked senator in Washington, and Corzine’s accomplishments from his less than five years in the senate could be listed on the back of a matchbook cover.

Things will be getting worse for New Jersey. Lautenberg will be a year older, and Corzine’s replacement in the senate will be at the bottom of the seniority rankings, number 100 out of 100, and in a minority party on top of that. That senator won’t get any choice committee assignments, unless you consider the senate subcommittee on manure exports to be a choice assignment. Look for New Jersey to get even worse treatment from Washington in 2006.

The only solution is to elect a republican senator from New Jersey. I betcha Senator Tom Kean Jr. would get that Springsteen resolution passed his first day in Washington.

NJBiz magazine writer Scott Goldstein reports on a survey of over 23,000 businesses that belong to the New Jersey Business & Industry Association (NJBIA), and it shows New Jersey businesses are not optimistic about the state’s future. Only 18% expect the New Jersey economy to improve in the first six months of 2006, while 39% expect conditions to worsen. The numbers in 2005 were nearly reversed. Only 28% of respondents said New Jersey a good place for expansion, down from 50% just a few years ago.

NJBIA president Philip Kirschner is willing to give governor elect Jon Corzine a chance to right the ship. “Corzine has the opportunity to tell businesses that they are valuable and he wants to work with them”.

If so, perhaps he can do something to help the chemical industry in New Jersey. Earlier today, the governor’s office announced a bunch of new regulations for the New Jersey chemical industry. New Jersey will now have the most intrusive chemical plant safety regulations in the nation. If companies like Merck and Pfizer are looking at this new batch of expensive regulations, it may effect their plant closing decisions. Right now, these rules only apply to about 140 sites in New Jersey that handle extraordinarily hazardous substances (EHS), but it’s not the best way to tell industry that New Jersey is a great place to build or expand.

As the article notes, the New Jersey chemical industry has been working with Trenton since 2001 on mutually agreed upon safety regulations only to see four years of work tossed aside to placate the enviro-nuts in the democrat party. (Disclaimer: I work in the chemical industry.)

It was easy to get a job in New Jersey state government back in 2001 when Jim McGreevey had just been elected. You needed at least one of these qualifications:

1. A big time fund raiser or contributor
2. Recommended by a NJ party boss
3. Be the governor’s boyfriend

But there’s a new boss in town. Governor elect Jon Corzine has decided to use the power of the internet to recruit members of his new administration. He’s got a website and a form so that you can submit your resume online. The form allows you to select up to three areas of intererst, just pick from the many choices. Want to be attorney general?? Or maybe help clean up the mess at DYFS or UMDNJ?? Plus you get outstanding benefits, like free medical and pension.

One job that’s not listed is the open US Senate seat. I think you have to go to NY Senator Chuck Schumer’s website to apply for that one.

I may apply for the job of secretary of state. The current office holder, Regena Thomas, testified before the NJ legislature for a week this past summer and they still can’t figure out what she does. I can do that. I think I even get a state owned limo with NJ State Police chauffeur.

Newsbusters.Org, a blog run by Brent Mozell’s Media Research Center picks on the Washington Post for an article they ran about Jon Corzine and his search for a senate replacement [Washington Post's Leibovich Can't Find a Liberal In New Jersey Senate Derby].

The article in Sunday’s Washington Post actually pokes fun at the whole process, the “interviews” by Chuck Schumer and how the candidates for the job have been pestering Corzine since the election. The article also notes that Jon Corzine made a joke about Chuck Schumer a few years back, and the thin skinned humorless gent from New York state has never forgiven him.

Newsbusters notes that all the candidates are far left liberals, though as always the media doesn’t use the “L” word. I think they’ve even referred to Frank Pallone and Rob Andrews as “moderates”. I guess compared to Corzine everyone’s a moderate, but most of these guys have American Conservative Union rankings in the single digits, an area reserved for the truly loony liberal left in the house of representatives.

Acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey has taken his name out of the running for Jon Corzine’s vacant seat in the US Senate [Codey doesn't want Corzine's Senate seat]. Codey has been in the New Jersey legislature for nearly three decades and has amassed a lot of good will and power as president of the NJ Senate. I never thought he would trade that in to be a junior senator in a minority party with no seniority in the US Senate for a year at which point he would then have to run an expensive state wide race to retain the seat in 2006. And if Corzine stumbles badly or gets bored and decides to run for presidenet, Codey will have a clear path to the governor’s job.

Without Codey, the conventional wisdom is that representative Bob Menendez is the front runner for the senate seat with reps Rob Andrews and Frank Pallone also in contention. Pallone is an empty suit, and Andrews committed the cardinal sin for a 2005 democrat and that was to vote for the Iraq War. That leaves Menendez, who has lots of baggage but democrats must think voters won’t care about that stuff. Probably right. I’d still put Representative Rush Holt as a dark horse candidate.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day, perhaps one of America’s greatest holidays. It also marks the beginning of the annual secular-religious debate that culminates in Christmas. Get ready to see lots of back and forth between the secular institutions and Christians as we debate singing Christmas carols, saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”, creches on public property, etc.

If anyone really studied the history of the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the United States, they’d learn it is thoroughly influenced by religion. Read George Washington’s proclamation for the first Thanksgiving holiday in 1789 creating ” … a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Or Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation establishing the holiday in 1863: ” … to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens”.

I’d like to ask the anti-religious people, if you’re not thanking God on Thanksgiving, then who are you giving thanks too?? The guy who invented cranberry sauce in a can?? The government?? The NFL?? Howard Dean?? The pilgrims??

Speaking of pilgrims, how many of you remember celebrating Thanksgiving in grammar school? You’d recreate the first Thanksgiving dinner with pilgrims and Indians. You’d make those big hats and big belt buckles and shoe buckles. I think most schools have banned these shows. Modern history views the pilgrims as conquerors and plunderers, who slaughtered the Native Americans and stole their land.

My mom and dad and both of my brothers are coming down to the DynamoBuzz mansion here in beautiful Central New Jersey to celebrate the holiday at our home. Hope you all have plans for tomorrow, and if you’re traveling please be careful. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Too bad we didn’t have all these articles before the election.

During the last week, we’ve had a major flurry of articles about how awful the state finances are here in New Jersey. Since I’m naturally a cynical person, this strikes me as an attempt by the democrats in Trenton assisted by their comrades in the media to perhaps float trial balloons and maybe even to soften up the public for the upcoming “tough budget choices”.

Make no mistake about it, we are about to be overwhelmed by tax increases. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Gas taxes. Maybe sales taxes. The “millionaire’s tax” applying to all who make over $200,000 a year. DynamoBuzz rule #4 of politics: When democrat say “tough choices” they mean raising taxes.

The first problem is the transportation trust fund, a pool of money mostly funded by gasoline taxes. The public thinks this tax is going to road and infrastructure repair. The joke’s on the public. All the money that will be collected this upcoming year will go to pay the interest and principal on debt piled up the past ten years by democrat and republican governors aided and abbetted by democrat and republican legislatures. An editorial in today’s Star-Ledger has the typical democrat solution: raise taxes, along with leasing the Parkway and/or Turnpike. I don’t remember Corzine’s exact promise, but I thought he was against both, though he may have done one of those weasel-like “Yes, but …” promises that make the public cynical about politicians.

And then there’s the pension funding problem. Over the past ten years democrat and republican governors aided and abbetted by democrat and republican legislatures have not made the necessary payments to fund the pension fund for state workers. The estimated short fall is something like $7 billion over the next three years. If a private company tried that, they’d be in serious trouble but governments have done it with impunity. The choice is either to renegotiate benefits, as was done by General Motors with their unions, or raise taxes. <sarcasm>Gee, I wonder which tough choice Corzine will make??</sarcasm>

This article from the North Jersey Herald News nicely summarizes the situation with the transportation fund and the state pension.

The upcoming 2006-2007 state budget has been forecast to be over $5 billion in the red, requiring either cutting spending or raising taxes. Much of the increase is due to mandated spending. It doesn’t include any of Jon Corzine’s campaign promises, universal health care, universal pre-school, universal college tuition, universal stem cell research, etc..

Borrowing the money should be off the table. As this article notes, New Jersey is one of the most debt ladden states in the country. In June 2000 the state had $15 billion in debt. Today it has $28 billion.

Political analyst Ingrid Reed makes the point that if the democrats in Trenton really sock it to the public with taxes it may effect the 2006 senate race, the race for Jon Corzine’s seat. This happened in 1990, when Senator Bill Bradley had to pay for the sins of Jim Florio and almost lost his senate seat to the political newcomer, Christie Todd Whitman.

It appears that an argument that the tax and spend democrats and their allies in media are making goes like this. “Well, of course your taxes are high. We expect the best here in New Jersey, and that costs money.”

NJ state senator Wayne Bryant summarized this argument with this quote: I don’t want to be a Mississippi. I want to be a New Jersey.

Mr. Bryant confuses “expensive” with “best”. We have one of the most expensive youth care departments in the country, though I doubt it’s one of the best. We have an expensive medicial school in Newark, but UMDNJ is this close to losing certification. Try driving on Route 1 and 9 in certain places without losing a hubcap. But I bet our state workers earn two or three times more in salary and benefits than state workers in Mississippi. Maybe that’s what Mr. Bryant was talking about.

Why is New York senator Chuck Schumer interviewing candidates for Jon Corzine’s soon to be vacant New Jersey senate seat?? That’s what this article says. It quotes Schumer, that he has “… interviewed all of the candidates, at least the ones whose names are out there.” The article mentions as candidates Rush Holt, Bob Menendez, Frank Pallone and Rob Andrews, all members of the House of Representatives.

First off, if those four are the finalists for the seat, then the democrats will get into lots of trouble with the special interest groups that run the party. No black candidates?? No women?? Instead, we get a token Cuban-American (who was born in New York) and three white guys??

More troubling is why the hell is Corzine letting someone from another state pick his replacement?? Who cares what Schumer thinks. Corzine’s should select his own replacement and the idea is that the pick is supposed to represent the people of New Jersey, not the partisan views of a left wing sleaze ball hack like Schumer. This is a bad sign if you’re looking for indicators on how Corzine will act when he is being pressured by the NJ party bosses and the unions. If you’re letting Schumer boss you around like a bus boy, then that speaks very poorly of your management skills. Show some back bone, Mr. Corzine, and tell Schumer to buzz off. It’s your pick.

The front page headline from Wednesday’s Star-Ledger was “Corzine Faces a $5B Hole in New Budget” (can’t find an on-line link). The non-partisan Office of Legislative Services has done a preliminary analysis of the next New Jersey state budget which is due in June and reports that the projected spending will outpace expected income by as much as $5.1 billion.

The sub-headline reads “Governor-elect faces tough choice of raising taxes or cutting deeply”.

Uh-oh.

A tough choice would be laying off state workers. A tough choice would be going to your ex-girlfriend who happens to be the head of the largest state workers union and telling her that she has to go to her union members and get them to pay more for their healthcare and benefits. A tough choice would be to restructure state aid to school districts so that the bulk of it doesn’t go to the Abbott districts.

Raising taxes is the easy choice. And that’s what we’ll get. McGreevey already socked the business community with back-to-back $1 billion tax increases so how can Corzine do it again, especially if he is promising to help businesses. That pretty much leaves sales taxes and income taxes. Look for an increase in the sales tax to at least 7%. And if you remember McGreevey passed a millionaire’s tax in 2004 which defined a millionaire as someone making $500,000 a year. Look for Corzine to define a millionaire as anyone making over $200,000.

The projected budget does include restoring the property tax rebates to pre-Richard Codey levels. It does not include Mr. Corzine’s expanded rebate plan. Or bailing out the Transportation Trust Fund. Or costs of keeping the School Construction Corporation funded. Or funding Mr. Corzine’s campaign promises of universal health care, universal pre-school, universal college education, universal stem cell research, etc.

Unfortunately for NJ taxpayers, last week’s election result may have emboldened the state democrat party. After four years of out of control spending, tax increases and corruption, the democrats won re-election handily and actually increased the number of seats in the assembly. They’ve got to be thinking that the voters don’t care.

Maybe Corzine takes a page from Jim Florio’s 1990 playbook. Months after “Flim-Flam Florio” took office he rammed through a huge tax increase with the thought that if you’re going to raise taxes do it early in your administration so the voters will forget about it by the next election. Didn’t work too well for Mr. Florio.

New Jersey State Senator Tom Kean Jr. made it clear again today that he will be a candidate in 2006 for the US Senate from New Jersey [link]. Kean still hasn’t officially announced his plans, but every indication is that he will run. Early polls show the Union County republican beating almost all the potential democrat candidates for the job.

Unfortunately for Kean, he may face a republican challenger in an unneccesary and costly primary. Republican assemblyman Mike Doherty is making noise about running against Kean, and it appears Doherty wants to act like Steve Lonegan did in this years governor’s primary, and that is to attack the front runner from the political right. Doherty would have almost no chance of winning, but he could damage Kean enough to help send him to defeat in the general election. If state GOP chairman Tom Wilson wants to do something to help the republican party, he should call Mr. Doherty and not so subtly ask him to sit out this race.

Saw this article in the Washington Post, “A Daily Workout Could Add 4 Years to Life, Study Says“. The article highlights a study of 5,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans that found that those who had “moderate to high” levels of activity lived 1.3 to 3.7 years longer than those who got little exercise.

To those conclusions, I say “That’s it???” Only a couple of years??

It appears that if you sit in front of the TV on Sunday afternoon watching football while eating pork rinds you’ll drop dead at age 75, but if instead you work out and exercise you’d live to 76 or maybe 79. Of course you could argue that the pork rind eater would have more health problems, but still, only 1.3 to 3.7 additional years life expectancy??

That reminds me of a Bobcat Goldthwaite comedy routine I once saw on HBO. Someone told him that smoking will knock five years off your life expectancy, which was OK with him. Those five years he was losing were the last five years of his life, when he might be in his 80’s. Bobcat preferred to enjoy life and die at 75 rather than eat tofu, quit drinking and smoking and exercise so that he could live those extra years in his late 70’s. Think about it.

Looking at the turnout for last week’s New Jersey governor’s election lead me to have this frightening thought.

I think if Jim McGreevey had been on the ballot instead of Corzine, he would have won. Low republican turnout and heavy get out the vote efforts from unions and the inner city political machines would have given McGreevey the win.

A day after my critique of Doug Forrester’s post election rant about how he lost the election due to George Bush, the APP puts out an op-ed with similar thoughts.

The piece, “Forrester has only himself, not Bush, to blame” is written by Carl Golden who worked in the Tom Kean and Christie Whitman administrations as press secretary and who says he has known Doug Forrester for decades. Golden gives a point by point analysis of the rotten Forrester campaign. He also notes that Corzine won by about 200,000 votes and 184,000 of those votes came from only four counties (Hudson, Essex, Camden and Bergen counties) evidence of superior get out the vote efforts by the democrats and their union conspirators.

This happened after last year’s presidential election and looks like it’s happening again this year after the NJ governor’s race. PEBS. Post Election Blogging Syndrome, that malaise that strikes political bloggers after a highly charged emotional election. I’ll see if I can shake my PEBS and get back into a good blogging rhythm.

I would have prefered something along the lines of the classic post election analysis, “The people have spoken — the bastards”. Instead, it looks like Doug Forrester is trying to spin his Election Day flop as the fault of George Bush [Forrester says Bush troubles became his own]. Sorry, Doug. I’m not buying that.

Just as a reminder, the last NJ governor’s election took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, when Bush had approval ratings over 80%. Even then democrats did the same as they did last week, winning the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s race. Forrester certainly had a tough chore, starting the race twenty points behind Corzine, and the democrats having a huge fundraising advantage in a state where democrats and independents outnumber republicans 2 to 1.

But Forrester did nothing to inspire republican voters, who in my opinion decided to sit this one out. As I wrote last week, Bush got 1.6 million votes last November, while Forrester got a bit over 900,000. Where did those extra Bush voters go?? They didn’t vote for Corzine and only a handful may have voted third party. The rest stayed home. Get out the vote efforts are difficult, they take a lot of organization and a lot of energy. Forrester took the easy route, running lots of ads late in the race and relying on those annoying pre-recorded phone messages during the week before the election.

US News & World Report columnist Michael Barone took a pretty thorough look at all the NJ election results and felt that Corzine and Forrester pretty much did as expected [The New Jersey results]. In 2001, McGreevey got the same vote percentage as Gore in 2000, and Corzine got the same vote percentage as Kerry in 2004. Barone does note that turnout was lower in 2005 than in 2001 in the strong democrat counties of Essex, Camden and Middlesex counties, but Corzine still did well indicating that the union fueled get out the vote efforts succeeded.

Steve Kornacki at PoliticsNJ has a good candidate by candidate analysis of the possible picks for Jon Corzine’s open US senate seat. He doesn’t make a prediction, but does highlight NJ state senator Nia Gill as a longshot.

I still predict it will be Bob Menendez. I question if the other democrat members of the house (Rob Andrews, Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell, Don Payne, Rush Holt) would challenge the powerful Menendez in a primary. Menendez has higher name recognition, a bigger campaign chest and a huge network of potential campaign contributors. Menendez would score points for Corzine due to the minority angle.

Menendez has been anointed by the media as a party boss, and Corzine might be scared to pick an insider after campaigning as an outsider. If Corzine doesn’t go the Menendez route, my second bet would be Rush Holt. Either Holt or Menendez would be a tough opponent for Tom Kean Jr. in the 2006 race for the full 6 year term.

All the votes are counted, and it looks like voter turnout for the 2005 NJ governor’s race was about 45% of registered voters. That’s lower than 2001, which at the time was the lowest since the 1950’s.

Pathetic.

I’m angrier about the low turnout than I am about Corzine winning. No more newspaper stories about how outraged NJ residents are about property taxes and corruption and out of control spending. Angry voters go out and vote. Lazy apathetic voters stay home.

There’s already talk about moving election day to the weekend or perhaps having Election Week instead of Election Day. It won’t matter to lazy apathetic voters. They made it easier this year, losening the rules so anyone could request an absentee ballot.

This Gannett article reports on a post election conference at Monmouth University. At the end of the article, a Monmouth University co-ed is quoted, saying she didn’t vote because “I didn’t really know about either of their (Corzine and Forrester’s) platforms”. Give me a break. I almost never agree with the liberal bloggers at Frogsdong but they are just as angry about voters who plead ignorance. As they note, there were radio debates, TV debates, newspaper coverage and the internet. “No excuse” says Frogsdong, who takes the very conservative point of view that ignorant voters don’t deserve to vote. (Hey, what happened to the frog pictures??)

The AP has one of the first detailed reports of the NJ vote (”Winning formula eludes state GOP“). They note, as I have, that the voter turnout was awful, most likely less than the 49% of registered voters that turned out to vote in the 2001 governor’s race.

So after months of reading about how angry NJ voters were about corruption, obscene property taxes, out of control tax and spending in Trenton, less than half the voters bothered to show up an vote for governor. As I’ve said many times and I’ll repeat again until I’m proven wrong, New Jersey voters are the most apathetic and ill-informed voters in the country.

And why did Forrester lose?? The story notes that democrats are trying to spin this election into a referendum on Bush. AP/Ipsos did some exit polling which should the “Bush” factor was not a big deal. I’d say the problem was Forrester, who ran a pretty uninspiring campaign.

Just as a reminder, look at the NJ vote breakdown from last year’s presidential election:

Kerry: 1,799,320
Bush: 1,587,494

Bush got almost 1.6 million votes, while Forrester will get less than a million. Where did those 600,000 Bush voters go?? They didn’t vote for Corzine. They stayed home. The Bush campaign did a masterful job of getting out the vote, even in a “blue” state like NJ. Forrester should have tapped into the turnout machine Bush used in 2004. He did not run a good campaign. Instead, it appears he relied very heavily on those annoying pre-recorded phone messages.

I realize that the 2004 presidential contest was a highly emotional election which certainly influenced turnout. But the issues in this 2005 NJ governor’s election should have been equally emotional and important to NJ voters. But I guess not. The angry Jersey voter is a media myth.

This is the first election in a few years when there weren’t complaints about stolen elections and all that. Not one report in the MSM. Why is that??

My theory: because the democrats won both elections (New Jersey and Virginia).

When democrats win, it’s because of their superior candidates and organization.

When republicans win, it’s because of voter intimidation, disenfranchised voters, paperless e-voting machines programmed to vote republican, illegal voter challenges, dirty tricks, felons blocked from voting, broken machines in minority districts, etc.