The DynamoBuzz family wagon is packed and we’re ready to head down the shore. The last week in June is always our annual trek to Wildwood. We’ll be back on Friday night. Not sure if I will have any internet access, if not I’ll be back to report on the going’s on later in the week.

Looks like it will be good weather, so we’re all excited. We’ve been going down there for seven years. The place we used to stay at, the Satellite Motel, is gone. The owner sent us a letter over the winter. He sold the place, said he got a good offer. So the motel is gone, and in it’s place will be …. drumroll please …. Luxury condos and townhouses. Great. Just what the Jersey shore needs.

The state of New Jersey is proposing changes in the sales tax to gather an additional $175 million a year in revenue. One of the changes is to add sales taxes to internet downloaded music and software.

The blog of the National Taxpayers Union notes that the state of New Jersey is expecting your internet service provider to collect the tax. So if you have Optimum Online or AOL, they are supposed to collect the six cents worth of sales tax you pay on a 99 cent download and forward it to the state treasury.

Even MTV.com makes note of this and quotes the governor’s office saying this isn’t a tax increase but rather a question of tax fairness. Why should you pay sales tax on a CD you buy at the mall yet avoid sales tax if you pay for an online download of the same album??

How does the internet vendor know that you live in New Jersey?? IP addresses don’t always point to your home state. I guess they’ll ask you what state you live in before you download. Of course we’ll tell the truth.

This article says the tax on downloaded music, books and software will also apply to online pornography. Hey, New Jersey already benefits from taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and gambling so why not get tax money off porn?

Don’t know how many of you follow the Supreme Court, but today’s 5-4 ruling allowing the city of New London, CT to seize private property via eminent domain in order to turn it over to private developers is downright sickening [link].

Government has always been able to condemn private property and pay the land owners “fair market value” when taking their property, but it has generally been used in order to build roads or other public uses. The case before the court involved the city of New London condemning a residential neighborhood (including Victorian homes owned by the same family for decades) in order to turn the property over to private developers who plan on building the usual mix of condos, shops, restaurants, office buildings and hotels. The development is a $300 million project near a Pfizer facility

New London argued that the new development was good for the city because it increased property tax ratables. Though the area wasn’t considered run down or blighted, they argued that the new economic development was better for the city. The court ruled in their favor, and now if some city decides that they can get more property taxes by taking your property and selling it to a private developer, they can go ahead and do it.

Super blogger Michelle Malkin has a collection of links to discussion about this atrocity. As does Instapundit. And blogger Donald Sensing notes that churches don’t pay property taxes now, but many sit on prime real estate. If you want to know who will benefit from this Supreme Court ruling, Sensing says it plainly, “Follow the money”.

In dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random … The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

Take your eyes off your computer and look at the house your sitting in. Think about the property taxes you pay. Then realize that in most cases the town you live in could get more property taxes if in place of your house there was a town house development. Or a store. Or an office. They can condemn your property, give you a few grand for it, and then turn it over to a private developer.

Loyal DynamoBuzz visitor bpiscadlo notes: “The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled that a citizens’ homes may be taken away from them for private projects…can you imagine with the corruption in this state what will happen to us?”

And what does this mean in New Jersey?? This state is full of wealthy land developers and business interests, from Donald Trump and George Norcross down to the local land developers. You know the names, just look in the Sunday real estate listings. All they need to do is go a local town planning board and propose some development project that has the net effect of increasing tax revenue. Like perhaps tear down three or four older ranch houses and replace them with townhouses. Or maybe a property with a motel that could instead have a hotel/conference center. Of course, these developers have already contributed thousands of dollars to the local politicians, and I’m sure the politicians will get even more if the land deal goes through. This is pay to play on steroids, state sponsored kick backs.

This ruling gives local governments unlimited power over your personal property. Let’s stop worrying about whether the FBI can look at your library records and instead focus on true abuses of government power.

Disgraced ex-New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey spent $25,000 to have an official portrait of himself done to hang in the governor’s office in Trenton. The money came from the pool of funds given to ex-governors to help them transition to private life. I think every NJ governor of recent history has commisioned an official portrait after leaving office. Christie Whitman paid a bit less than McGreevey for a portrait from the same outfit, NYC based Portraits Inc.

Well, the portrait is finally complete [link], and now the ex-governor wants to hold a ceremony with the official unveiling of the masterpiece in Trenton, with the cost of the ceremony coming from the remaining transition funds. Can anyone guess how excited the NJ democrats are about the thought of Jim McGreevey having a big media show right before the November election??

The article suggests that McGreevey unveil the portrait after the election but before the new governor is sworn in. Sort of a lame duck session party.

Of course, political science professor Dave Rebovich is quoted with one of his pearls of wisdom, “He is part of New Jersey history. And he chose to step down, the people nor the law ousted him.” Yeah, Nixon sort of did the same thing. Puh-leeze!!

The Xanadu entertainment complex to be built near Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands sounds like it’s going to be glitzy, garrish and over the top. In addition to a roller coaster, Xanadu will feature a state of the art movie theater expecting to draw 4 million customers a year. Read about it here. The theater complex will have an IMAX type huge screen in one theater, and another will have 73 inch wide “love seats” instead of those tiny annoying movie theater seats. And there will be an outdoor ampitheatre type theater on the roof to be billed as a drive in theater without the cars. The theater will have an Egyptian theme. Time of arrival: sometime in 2007.

Found at Galleyslaves, a link to a pretty good story about Matthew Lesko. As all you fans of late night TV know, Lesko acts like he drank a few too many large coffees. He’s the guy pushing the “Free Stuff” from the government and all that while wearing a suit covered in question marks.

The article does point out that alot of his schtick is basically a get rich quick scheme that 99 times out of 100 doesn’t make anybody rich. His books are basically put together by cutting and pasting stuff from government publications about grant and aid programs, and government publications are not copyrighted.

Lesko is 62 years old, a Vietnam navy vet and pretty rich. According to the article, he’s sold 3.5 million books, most at about $40 a pop. He was invited to speak at Harvard Business School. If he’s crazy, he’s crazy like a fox.

New Jersey is supposed to have a budget in place by the start of the fiscal year. We don’t have one yet, and the new fiscal year is a week from Friday. Do not fear, our elected officials work best with a looming deadline, and they’re hard at work this week on the details.

First off is the tax hikes, and the biggest is about $175 million in sales tax revenue to be collected by adding the sales tax to services that are currently tax exempt [link]. The tax will now apply to tanning salons, self storage facilities, landscaping, flooring and carpet installation, courier services, health club memberships, limousine rides, private investigator services, tatoo parlors, carpet cleaning, bail bonds and downloaded music, movies and software. Revenue from these types of tax increases is hard to predict, especially the downloaded musis tax which would rely on the provider to collect the tax and then forward it to the state. In the internet era when many providers are not even located in the United States, I don’t expect this to generate a lot of revenue. And some people may just go to Pennsylvania for their tatoos.

The other tax increases passed by the NJ senate rasies about $100 million by eliminating various deductions, the biggest being an exemption on retirement income. Republican mostly voted against the tax increases, and Minority Leader Leonard Lance said of the tax on retirees, “It means retirees will leave New Jersey”. I hope not, who’s going to live in all that age restricted housing being built all over the state??

The NJ Senate also added a few million to the property tax rebate program. Indications are that the assembly wants even bigger rebates though they are not too keen on the new taxes. Maybe the fact that only the assembly is up for election this November and not the senate has something to do with that. Stay tuned.

Michael Barone in US News reads the tea leaves to try to predict the outcomes of the 2005 and 2006 elections [link]. In 2005, there are only three big elections, NYC mayor and the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia, the republicans are favored to retake the governorship and in NYC republican Mike Bloomberg should win re-election but that will be a tough one.

New Jersey was picked to be the easiest for democrats, but Barone notes the high republican turnout compared to the democrat turnout on June 6th might indicate that democrats are not as enthused. I tend to think the higher republican turnout was due to the more contested race and Corzine’s competition was token at best. But this raises the question of how enthused NJ democrats are for Corzine. He’s not exactly Mister Charisma. Luckily for Corzine that Forrester is equally dull. Most of the emotion in the electorate is due to anger at high property taxes and corruption and the democrats are on the wrong side of both issues.

For democrats to win in New Jersey they need high turnout from minority voters and high senior citizen. I’m a political news junkie, but I can’t think of one thing Corzine has done for either constituency. So most likely he will go back to the standard democrat election play book, and Chapter One says “Get the base enthused with scare tactics”.

He’s attacking Forrester’s drug prescription plan in a play for the senior citizen’s vote. Actually he’s using surrogates. Looks like Corzine picked Rep. Rob Andrews to go after Forrester’s property tax plan and Rep. Frank Pallone to be the attack poodle on Forrester’s drug benefit plan [link]. Pallone is trying to link Forrester’s plan to the plan passed by the US Congress last year, a plan that the AARP supported.

The NJ governor’s election is still pretty far off, and I thought the summer months would be slow for election news. Not so. GOP candidate Doug Forrester has come out swinging, spending the first two weeks since the primary making public appearances and linking democrat Jon Corzine to recent corruption scandals in the Garden State [link]. The Corzine campaign responded by calling Forrester a liar. And then Forrester scolded Corzine for being “negative”.

Advantage: Forrester.

Forrester initially focused on the Corzine connection to NJ democrat party boss George Norcross, something easy to pick on considering Corzine donated almost a million dollars to Norcross PACs. Norcross paid back the favor by badmouthing Corzine in one of the infamous undercover tapes released by the state a few months back.

Forrester is now linking Corzine to the disgraced democrat fundraiser Charles Kushner. Kushner is serving time for election funding violations and obstruction of justice. The obstruction charge was from the attempt by Kushner to blackmail his company’s treasurer so he would stop cooperating with federal investigators. Kushner hired a hooker to set up the treasurer in a motel tryst that was filmed by hidden cameras.

Corzine’s connection to Kushner involved the failed attempt to purchase the New Jersey Nets basketball team and keep them in New Jersey. Kushner was the major player in the bid and Corzine was a partner. NYC developer Bruce Ratner ended up winning the bidding war and he plans to move the team to Brooklyn. In addition to the stink from Kushner, Corzine had to deal with charges from Forrester that he had used his influence to try to get subsidies from the state in order to help with the purchase. Corzine denies that, but Forrester has filed freedom of information request to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for documents. The NJSEA is so far fighting the request. The NJSEA is headed by George Zoffinger, a McGreevey guy who has frequently clashed with acting governor Codey.

Looks like part of the Forrester strategy is to link Corzine to the democrat corruption scandals of the recent past. Polls show voters are quite upset with the corruption, and it’s not too hard to find links between Corzine and the players in the scandals. So far it’s only Corzine-Kushner and Corzine-Norcross. I’m sure they’re looking for Corzine-McGreevey connections (I bet they’d pay a lot of money for a photo of the smiling McGreevey standing next to Corzine). And let’s not forget that Corzine’s #1 mentor was “The Torch”, Bob Torricelli. It’s going to be a fun couple of months.

Forrester should run against Corzine as if Corzine is the incumbent. That way he can link him to the scandals, high taxes and obscene property taxes. Forrester is not as inviting a target for attacks.

I’ve been blogging a lot about this stupid plan by the airlines to allow cell phone usage on airplanes. I wrote a few weeks back that the FAA asked for input on the proposal and the response from the public was overwhelmingly against it. The flight attendants union was also against it. Flight attendants are first hand witnesses to the often tense environment on a cramped cross country flight and they know the potential for loud, rude cell phone yackers to cause havoc.

And now cell phone giant Cingular Wireless also said they told the FAA that they oppose the idea [link]. A Cingular spokesperson said, “We believe there is a time a time and a place for wireless phone conversations, and seldom does that include the confines of an airplane flight”. They also think that airborne wireless phones will interfere with ground wireless communications.

So it looks like everyone is against it. Why won’t this idea die and go away?? Because the airlines look at it as an easy way to make money. Even a few extra hundred bucks a flight for cell phone usage will make a huge difference for air carriers. Boeing is pushing the feature in all it’s new planes and they expect it to be in place starting early next year [link]. They are waiting for “.. the regulatory issues and the social issues” to be solved. They realize that the best they will probably get is limited cell phone time on flights, maybe towards the beginning and end of the flight with “quiet time” in the middle. I still prefer the “Cone of Silence” like Maxwell Smart used on “Get Smart”.

On February 11, 2006, the University of Wisconsin will play Ohio State at Lambeau Field, home of the NFL Green Bay Packers. They won’t be playing football, however, but instead it will be an outdoor hockey game [link]. In 2001, Michigan and Michigan State played an outdoor hockey game that drew over 74,000 spectators. This game is expected to draw about 40,000. They’re calling it The Frozen Tundra Hockey Classic and it may become an annual event.

Enlighten-NewJersey has a post about a 2004 visit to the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay by some of New Jersey democrat political leaders, Representatives Rush Holt, Bob Menendez and Senator Jon Corzine [link]. Holt, Menendez and Corzine found nothing wrong with the prison camp or the interogation methods, reporting “..the interrogation process to be absolutely professional.”

As you may have heard, earlier this week Illinois democrat senator Dick Durbin took to the floor of the US Senate and compared Guantanamo to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulag and the killing fields of Cambodia. Durbin is not just a run of the mill left wing crank, he’s democrat senate whip, basically second in charge to minority leader Harry Reid. He’s a top level left wing crank so his comments slandering the effort at Guantanomo carry extra weight.

So far, Durbin has not apologized. As Enlighten-NewJersey notes, maybe our senator, Mr. Corzine, can comment on Mr. Durbin and perhaps ask for an apology??

I have a compromise. Maybe move some of the terrorists from Guantanomo to a prison in Illinois, Mr. Durbin’s home state??

The Corner at National Review picked up the Enlighten-NewJersey post at around lunchtime today.

Philly1.com writes about the upcoming NJ governor’s race, “In NJ, Money Can’t Buy Happiness - But It Definitely CAN Buy Your Party’s Nomination: Wealthy Forrester Wins GOP Primary, While Wealthier Corzine Buys Democratic Contest“.

The writer makes the point that the public likes self-financed candidates because they feel they are “above the fray” or “too rich to be bought”. I really don’t think the public has given it that much thought. Do we want the United States to become like Victorian England, when only aritocrats and the wealthy served in Parliament??

I’m not sure of the best way to do it, but there should be a way for a someone who is not a multi-millionaire to run for office. Public financing of elections was the vehicle to clean up elections and “take the money out” but this year in NJ we have the first time in a statewide election where both candidates have opted out of public money and the limits it places on spending. Any cap on campaign spending would probably be an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. It may take a several years of elections where self financed rich candidates win elections before there is a backlash, but we’re not there yet.

Political blogger Daly Thoughts has analysis fo the latest Star-Ledger/Eagleton poll of the New Jersey governor’s race. The poll gave Jon Corzine a ten point lead, 43 to 33%, over Doug Forrester. One of the bright spots for Forrester is that he leads Corzine by 6 points among self described independant voters. And of all the poll respondants, only 13% said Corzine has had any major accomplishments as Senator while 41% said he had only minor accomplishments and 23% said none at all. Ouch!! I wish they had asked that 13% to name one of Corzine’s accomplishments.

The continuing saga of the New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation looks like it will only get worse in the coming months and it may even haunt the November election like one of those horror movie slashers.

The latest reports are that all of the $8.6 billion is accounted for in school construction projects. The bad news is that barely covers half the spending that was planned when the huge bond effort was approved. A GOP assemblyman estimated that it would take another $18 billion to $25 billion to actually finish the job.

In October, all the school districts must file their long range spending plans with the state. At that time the NJSCC will be able to report on how much money they need to finish the projects. Just in time for the election.

While some of the shortfall could be due to poor planning and initial underestimating, a big cause of the deficit is waste and possibly fraud in the huge public works project. NJ Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper has probably only scratched the surface in her investigations so far. Cost over-runs, exorbant bonuses and spending on office supplies, project change orders totalling millions, inflated purchases of property. It’a sickening.

Now the question is what do we do about it? If the state hesitates, it’s only a matter of time before the friendly attorneys at the NJ Education Law Center go to the NJ Supreme Court and start filing claims. At that point, the NJ Supremes will order the state to spend the extra billions to fund the program. It won’t be pretty, and the billions we are talking about will dwarf the money we’re talking about for property tax relief.

At the liberal blog MyDD, there’s a post with discussion and comments about the state of the NJ governor’s race between Doug Forrester and Jon Corzine. The poster says this race should normally be considered a democrat slam dunk (he says “lay-up”) but notes there may be some backlash at Corzine over the recent democrat corruption scandals. He predicts New Jersey may go from solid blue state to swing state. The only way that could happen is if someone can resuscitate the NJ republican party.

One commenter says Corzine would win in walkover if he shaves. He thinks the beard is costing Corzine a few points in the polls.

At Republican Reports they note that the poll shows a majority of democrats still are angry at Jim McGreevey, and Forrester gets a 26% of that group.

I wonder if there’s a subliminal message in this news headline:

“Corzine Launches Property Tax Offensive“

Hmm … using the words “Corzine” and “Property Tax” and “offensive” in the same line is an interesting choice of words.

The article details the actions of the Corzine campaign since Tuesday’s primary to attack Doug Forrester’s property tax plan. Corzine has mostly used surrogates like George Norcross puppet Rob Andrews for the attacks.

There’s over four months until the election to dissect the Corzine and Forrester property tax plans. For now, realize that both plans stink.

Someone over at National Review Online had a great solution to the problems with the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. We should turn the prison over to Cuba and contract with Fidel Castro to run it. The United States would be getting a world class torturer with forty plus years experience running Cuba’s hell hole of a prison system. And the complaints from the international community would dry up. When was the last time any liberal criticized Fidel Castro??

All indications as of yesterday were that the NJ property tax convention was dead on arrival in the NJ senate where it looked like it would die due to senate indifference and outright hostility to the convention idea, particularly to the fact that it couldn’t address state spending. Now, it looks like the convention has life again thanks to Senate president/acting governor Richard Codey.

Codey is offering to change the bill to allow the convention to look at spending. More importantly, Codey’s proposal would allow NJ state senators and assemblymen to serve as delegates to the convention [link].

Mark Feffer at PropertyTaxNJ has his take on this. He feels that Codey is trying to do democrat gubernatorial candidate Jon Corzine a favor by pushing through the property tax convention plan. Corzine would like to go through this election season without making any proposals to solve the property tax crisis, instead passing the buck to a convention. Without a convention, Corzine would have to come up with a plan, something better than what he has suggested so far, which is more rebates.

Feffer notes that Codey also would push the convention to the summer of 2007. What a joke. A convention in the summer of 2007 would mean any constitutional ammendments or other changes would go to the voters in maybe the fall of 2007 or possibly the spring of 2008 and would be implemented in 2008 or 2009. That means property tax relief wouild be at least three years away. Assuming voters accept whatever the convention proposes. That is unacceptable, we have a crisis now and it will only be worse by 2008.

Rasmussen Reports has the first official poll for November’s NJ governor’s race, and it is incredibly good news for the republicans and the Forrester campaign. The poll shows democrat Jon Corzine leading republican Doug Forrester by only 7%, 47% to 40% [link]. The poll of 500 likely voters was done the day after the primary.

Most surprising was that Mr. Corzine, the perfect dream candidate annointed by the MSM as the pre-ordained slam dunk winner in November, has favorable-unfavorable numbers of 42%-36% while Forrester’s numbers are 38%-28%.

Corzine can be beaten. Let’s hope this poll is a wake-up call to the national republican party. They abandoned Schundler in 2001 and we got stuck with McSleazy. They cannot allow that to happen again this year when the opponent is the ultra-liberal and apparently very beatable Jon Corzine.