Tomorrow is the last day of August, and all I can say is “Thank God!” About half of my blogging is about political stuff, and August is traditionally a slow month for political news. I’ve been hard pressed to find something interesting to blog about. And at the state level, all the politicians are out of Trenton, so there ain’t much going on.

The summer of 2004 was great for DynamoBuzz. Last August, there was the blogging gift from heaven as far as I’m concerned, Jim McGreevey’s resignation. That was just a month after Charles Kushner and his troubles. McGreevey was a lowdown crook, but he was great for bloggers. Richard Codey is a choir boy in comparison. I have to balance by glee of McGreevey leaving in disgrace with the fact that there isn’t as much to blog about with him gone. <Heavy sigh>.

But after Labor Day begins the official start of the 2005 fall campaign for governor. If it’s anything like what we’ve seen so far this past summer, then this campaign for governor has the potential to be very uninspiring. The #1 issue for NJ voters is property taxes, and so far this summer the news had been about Doug Forrester’s captive insurance company and his donations plus the shenanigans with Jon Corzine’s financial disclosure and his gift/loan to Carla Katz. Barely a word about property taxes.

Not that either candidate has a solution to the property tax crisis here in New Jersey. Corzine’s plan is to expand rebates and make them means tested. As Paul Mulshine notes in today’s Star-Ledger column “The joke’s on the GOP“, Forrester’s plan doesn’t address the current problems with school funding but rather subsidizes the excesses in the existing system. At least Forrester’s plan has a catchy name, “30 in 3″ for a 30% reduction in three years.

The fall campaign has started, with Jon Corzine tapping into his bulging campaign coffers with TV ads. I actually heard one of his radio ads this morning, and he mananged to use every political cliche in the book in just a minute or two. It was a bit of a snoozer. No specifics, just the old “working for the people” and his promise to make NJ more affordable without saying exactly what that means. Forrester’s previous ads weren’t too original, unless you consider “Conga Line of Corruption” right up there with “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too,” and “Morning in America” as great campaign themes.

I would have to guess that Forrester is a bit depressed that he hasn’t made any dent at all in Corzine’s lead. It was about 10% back in June, and after a few months of mudslinging, it’s still Corzine up by 10 points. Forrester is probably hoping that the debates will make a difference, but neither candidate is a great speaker, and my guess is the impact on the race will be minimal.

My advice to Forrester: Spend half the time just talking about property taxes and the other half of the time reminding the people about Torricelli, Kushner, McGreevey, Norcross, etc. And even then it might not be enough to get Forrester to 50% plus one vote.

I guess Katrina did a pretty good job on Florida. I was off-line for most of Friday, then back on-line for a few hours only to be knocked off line again for most of Saturday and Sunday. I checked with my webhost, and they think everything should be OK from this point forward.

Luckily my host isn’t in New Orleans. There’s going to be Big Trouble in the Big Easy. The city is below sea level, surrounded by levees that will not be able to hold back an estimated 20 inches of water.

Unfortunately, due to DynamoBuzz being down, I wasn’t able to submit a link to this week’s Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers over at “If This is Paradise, I wish I had a Lawn-mower”. I prefer to call it PDC Ryan’s blog.

DynamoBuzz was off-line for about a day. My host is located in southern Florida which I guess is a nice place to be, except for during hurricanes.

Updates later.

It was two months ago that the US Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London could use eminent domain to seize private property and turn it over to private developers. The Kelo decision is still reverberating throughout the US political landscape as people woke up and found that powerful real estate developers could take their homes if the project resulted in more tax revenue for the local community.

Over thirty state legislatures are debating legislation to limit the ability of governments to use eminent domain for these types of property seizures. Delaware and Alabama have already passed laws. Texas appeared to be close, but it looks like the cash rich and politically connected real estate developers are trying to derail the bill in committee. The US congress has also introduced a bill to deny federal funding for any state project that uses eminent domain to seize private property for the use of developers.

I said two months ago that this issue cuts across all political lines, democrat and republican, liberal and conservative. Rich Lowry at NRO pointed out that the most vocal critic of eminent domain in the US House of Representatives is Democrat Maxine Waters, a card carrying member of the far left of the democrat party ["Mad Max Stands with the Right"]. The only real criticism of Kelo is from a few left wing nuts who oppose anything that conservatives support, and property rights has long been a battle of conservative Western state land owners.

The eminent domain fight moves from New London CT, and maybe the spotlight will shine on the New Jersey shore town of Long Branch. The township is on a major redevelopment kick, trying to turn the entire oceanfront into that all too common mix of luxury condos/townhouses/retail shops. They are just about complete, except for about three dozen pesky landowners who would like to keep their little piece of the American dream, a house down the shore. The Wall Street Journal has the best summary of the fight, pitting homeowners against Long Branch and the developers, K. Hovnanian. So far the landowners have lost every battle, and the Kelo decision did not help. Hovnanian doesn’t lose too many of these disputes, and they are not going to stop until New Jersey is covered border-to-border in high density housing development.

The Long Branch fight has drawn in US Representative Frank Pallone, who calls the town his home. Two weeks ago, he held an event in Long Branch where he said he opposes the Kelo decision and he would do what he could to stop the land seizures [link].

Representative Rob Andrews says he’s going to run for Jon Corzine’s senate seat [link]. Andrews made the declaration in a mailing to residents of his south Jersey congressional district. This may be a surprise to Mr. Corzine, who would get to appoint his own replacement if he wins the November 2005 NJ governor’s race. Every indication is that Corzine would go with Bob Menendez to take his place and that would give Menendez the advantage in the November 2006 election for a full term.

Of course, that’s if Corzine wins in November. And I wonder if Corzine would run again in 2006 if Forrester pulls the upset and gets the governor’s job. Losing a race you were favored to win doesn’t help in your next race. Plus Corzine’s bank account is going to start getting low, probably less than $200 million. Poor guy.

The Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closure will start final voting today to determine whether to shut down dozens of military bases as recommended by a preliminary study. One of the bases on the list is NJ’s Fort Monmouth facility, a site employing over 6000 residents [link]. Fort Monmouth is facing an uphill battle, since past history shows that 85% of the bases recommended for closing are actually closed down. But there are indications that there is some support on the BRAC committee for Fort Monmouth so there’s a chance the base could survive. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that Fort Monmouth is history, the committee decided to shut it down.

In The Kevin Bacon Game, also called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, you pick a movie actor or actress and try to connect that person to Kevin Bacon by naming common movies that they appeared in. For example, try to link Kevin Bacon to Charlie Sheen. Kevin Bacon co-starred with John Lithgow in “Footloose”. John Lithgow was in “World According to Garp” along with Glenn Close. Glenn Close and Michael Douglas starred in “Fatal Attraction” and of course, Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas were in “Wall Street”. There, a link!

Well New Jersey democrats are playing a new game, Six Degrees of Charles Kushner, where they actually linked Doug Forrester to the now-imprisoned democrat fundraiser. Forrester owns BeneCard, which has a contract with the Linden school board. The Linden school board used a third party firm, Highview Planning, to line up the contract. Highview Planning was partially owned by Charles Kushner. Bingo!! Forrester and Kushner are linked!! Never mind that for a decade or so Kushner raised millions for democrat candidates, was fund raiser #1 for disgraced ex-governor Jim McGreevey and came oh so close to being part owner of the NJ Nets with Jon Corzine.

PropertyTaxNJ has a post about how New Jersey government workers have one of the best health plans in the country, at least 10% better than other state workers and much better than most private sector employees. One state workers health plan has no deductible, a $5 co-payment and the employee doesn’t pay any of the premium. And we wonder why we are being slowly taxed to death. More here.

Also, the average salary of a NJ government worker is almost $55,000 while in the private sector it’s about $49,000 a year. Of course, if a private sector employee screws up he can be fired on the spot. It almost takes a felony conviction to fire a state worker, and even then you know the union will file greivenances and take the case to an arbitor.

The latest Strategic Vision poll of New Jersey voters has Jon Corzine at 50% and Doug Forrester at 40% in the race for NJ governor.

Stop on over at Daly Thoughts for a table of all polls since June.

You’ll notice two things. Corzine has never gotten higher than 50%, but also Forrester has never gotten higher than 40% You can make a case that the race doesn’t officially start until Labor Day, but given all the activity over the summer you would expect some bigger changes in the polls.

Corzine and the NJ state democrats are still sitting on a bunch of money waiting to unload an advertising blitz. Forrester has money, but not as much. A problem for Forrester will be if the race doesn’t get closer in September, outside GOP money and attention will probably go to the Virginia governor’s race which appears to be a more likely GOP pick-up. So I think the September polls need to show a little movement for Forrester.

I give a lot of credit to New Jersey environmental groups for continuing to press Jon Corzine on the Petty’s Island issue. Sharon at the Center of NJ Life takes a look at it and in today’s Asbury Park Press, Fred Stine of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network beats the drum, and calls out Mr. Corzine to take a stand against developing the island.

In the APP op-ed piece, “Corzine’s Petty’s Island comments don’t face facts“, Stine compares Mr. Corzine’s words and statements to what is actually occuring. Stine says “Petty’s Island is Corzine’s leadership test” and notes that every single environmental group in the state wants to preserve the island.

In a nutshell, Petty’s Island is 400 acre island in the Delaware River off the coast of Pennsauken NJ. The island is owned by Citgo, and the oil company wanted to donate the island to the state with the intention of saving the island as a nature preserve. The Pennsauken city government, backed up by politically connected developers aided by George “Boss” Norcross want to build luxury condos, a golf course, etc. Right before a state board was to vote on the Citgo offer to donate the property to the state, Norcross faxes a report to members of the board pitching the development project. Surprise, the board decides to reject the offer, and now Pennsauken is pursuing eminent domain to condemn the island and turn it over to the developers.

The island is being used by Citgo for petroleum storage and has some environmental problems that the company is liable for. The island is also home to wildlife, including bald eagles.

As Stine notes, Corzine has been very evasive in his statements, yet all indications are that the politically connected developers have the full support of the state and are on a fast track getting permits, assisted by Susan Bass Levin, who is now Corzine’s chief of campaign operations.

Corzine could go a long way to silencing critics who accuse him of being in the pocket of Boss Norcross by coming out strongly in favor of preserving Petty’s Island, but so far his attitude is that the environmental groups would never abandom a democrat and cause trouble for the fall campaign. We’ll see.

While the media is squawking about Doug Forrester and his insurance companies and where they are based, Tom Hester in the Star-Ledger notes that Jon Corzine owns two companies registered in Delaware and has interests in a third [Focus turns to Corzine firms].

Corzine says he doesn’t get a tax break by incorporating in Delaware, he just did it because his lawyer likes setting up LLC’s in Delaware and that Delaware makes it easy to set up an LLC. The Ledger found an attorney who agreed that there were no tax advantages, but that by incorporating in Delaware, Mr. Corzine “..enjoys simple business regulations and avoids disclosure laws he would have to comply with by incorporating in New Jersey.” For instance, an LLC incorporated in Delaware is almost like a Swiss bank account, everything is private including the officers and all financial information.

The three companies have assets up to $114 million. One of the Delaware LLC’s, JSC Investments, gave Carla Katz her $470,000 loan/gift and another LLC is partially owned by Carl Icahn, who also owns an Atlantic City casino.

NJ GOP chairman Tom Wilson wants to Corzine to disclose more, but so far Corzine is not taking the bait.

A 1.5 volt battery powered by urine [link]. The scientists refer to it as “biofluid-activated”.

Our favorite cyber personality, Jon Corzine’s internet director Matt Stoller, has a report out The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere co-written by Chris Bowers and hosted on a democratic think tank website. Come on, Matt, why can’t you just say “liberal”?? Just once. I read the report and in the introduction alone you use the word “progressive” nine times. Corzine has the same problem with the “L” word (see here).

Stoller is annoyed that conservative sites don’t have forums and diaries like the progressive/liberal sites. The problem with allowing feedback is that liberal trolls will quickly flood the comments with obscenities. Michelle Malkin had comments on her blog for less than a month before she had to disable them due to “progressives” and their foul mouthes.

Stoller goes on and on about how progressive/liberal bloggers will change the face of politics. Go ask President Howard Dean. Oops, he didn’t make it, did he?, though he was and still is the darling of progressive/liberal bloggers, a group that considers Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton to be sell-outs. John Kerry lost big time even with all the progressive/liberal bloggers pushing his candidacy, and as far as that Ohio house of representatives race that has progressive/liberal bloggers all excited, the democrat candidate was pro-gun and anti-tax and ran an ad featuring George Bush praising the value of military service. My guess is if he had John Kerry or Howard Dean in the ad he would have gotten trounced in the election instead of a 4 point loss.

The report lists Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit and the Drudge Report as conservative blogs, which I think is a bit of reach. By the way, the appendix lists NJ’s own Riehl World View as the #6 conservative site in the country with over 500,000 page views a week. I better start linking to Dan more often!! Tigerhawk also made the list at about #85.

If you want to read a counter view of the effect of progressive/liberal blogs on the democrat party, read this article from Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard, “The Electoral-Based Community: Why the rise of the left-wing blogosphere has been bad for the Democratic party“. Barnett notes that the lefty blogs feature “heated rhetoric and non-stop Bush bashing” along with “bare-knuckled, obscenity-laced politics”.

DailyKos was about the only place you could go to find a defense of Senator Dick Durbin and his US soldiers = Nazi/KGB/Khmer Rouge speech. And they spewed gallons of venon at Durbin after his half-hearted apology for the slur. Many comments show hatred of Christians and other people of faith (bibble thumpers) along with enough anti-Israel rhetoric to make David Duke prowd. If the democrats think the way to reach out to red state America is to follow the lead of the liberal/progressive bloggers then I don’t think the GOP has too much to fear.

Superblogger Gerry Daly at Daly Thoughts has his summary of the past week of campaigninig in the NJ governor’s race [Checking in on Joisey]. He calls the past week a draw, meaning Jon Corzine won since Doug Forrester is the one 10 points behind with the calendar showing less than three months before the election.

I wonder if they were laughing when they said this?? “Democrats Accuse Forrester Of Straying From Issues“. After spending the last month going after Doug Forrester’s prescription drug company, insurance business and self financed campaign, the democrats have the (pick one) gall/cajones/chutzpah to accuse Forrester of straying from the issues.

The article notes that the charges were made at a NJ Democratic State Committee press conference with a “… group of policy leaders” as described in the first sentence of the article. Not quite. One speaker was rookie Edison mayoral candidate Jun Choi, a democrat. Nice guy, but not really someone I’d call a policy leader. Another leader was Jonathan Metsch, described in the infamous Kay Licausi article as “… a longtime fund-raiser for Mr. (Bob) Menendez”.

And the third “policy expert” was Zulima Farber, another Menendez crony. Interesting. Back in 2001, Ms. Farber was rumored to be Jim McGreevey’s second NJ Supreme Court nomination. Farber is Cuban but also a black woman, and she was supposed to replace the only black justice on the court, James Coleman, who was about to retire. But then there were complaints from the democrat special interest groups because I guess they considered Farber to be hispanic rather than black, so McGreevey tossed her aside and named a black court justice, John Wallace. McGreevey then said the reason he dropped Farber wasn’t because of political pressure but because she had a bunch of speeding tickets and at least one bench warrant for unpaid tickets [link]. McGreevey had zero tolerance for poor drivers but no qualms about every other crime and corruption you could name.

The Associated Press takes a look at the tax returns of NJ governor candidates Doug Forrester and Jon Corzine.

Doug Forrester hasn’t filed his 2004 return yet, but they have his figures from 2002 and 2003. He took in about $12 million a year in 2002 and 2003. Jon Corzine’s return from 2004 reports his income at $11.8 million.

Though they have similar gross income, Forrester paid almost $4 million in income tax in 2003 while Corzine paid about a third of that, $1.3 million, in 2004. The difference is almost all of Corzine’s income was capital gains while Forrester got his income from BeneCard. I’m not a tax expert, but I think long term capital gains are taxed at 15%. Corzine reduced his taxable income by making over $3.5 million in charitable donations. And, no, the $470,000 to Carla Katz is not a charitable donation, though it’s not clear where or how Corzine listed that one.

Of course, year to year income is not Corzine’s source of wealth but rather his tremendous asset portfolio. So while both Forrester and Corzine are very wealthy people, in terms of assets Mr. Forrester is a pauper in comparison to Jon “Sugar Daddy” Corzine.

Jeff Edlestein at the Trentonian discusses one of my favorite topics, caffeine, in Sunday’s column “Starbucks: Nation’s top drug dealer“. I’m not a Starbucks fan, prefering my coffee to be just plain old coffee with milk and sugar, not funky flavored coffee or coffee with a head on it. But Edlestein points me toward the 16 oz grande Starbucks coffee that contains a whopping 550 mg of caffeine!! That’s over two and a half times more than 7-Eleven coffee and the equivalent of 5-1/2 NoDoz tablets.

Edlestein notes that the extra jolt turns Starbucks customers into java addicted caffeine fueled zombies so that the first thing a person wants after finishing a grande is to get another one. He notes that the typical customer shows the first stage of addiction, which is denial they have a problem. They all say they drink Starbucks for the taste while in actuallity they need it to function.

The column notes that Coke has only 35mg of caffeine. He forgot to mention my favorite drink as a child, Mountain Dew, which has almost twice as much. I still love the stuff, which is so thick that it’s difficult to carbonate. It really isn’t soda as much as it is caffeinated dilute corn syrup with a shot of green dye and lemon-lime flavor.

Looks like the litigation friendly lawyers at NJ’s Education Law Center don’t take vacations during August. Just two weeks after the New Jersey School Construction Corporation announced that they had burned through $8.6 billion in money dedicated to NJ school construction, the ELC was at the footsteps of the NJ Supreme Court, demanding that the hard pressed NJ state taxpayers come up with more cash [link].

Nobody knows how much more money it will take. I’ve read as high as $20 billion. That’s $20,000,000,000. Nobody in Trenton, starting at the top, wants to talk about it because there is an election in two and a half months. Corzine and Forrester have nothing to say about it. Plus the state hasn’t finished the investigation of the NJSCC fiasco, which appears to be a financial scandal up there with Enron and MCI as far as rip-offs. You can bet on one thing, the solution will hit us right in the pocketbook.

UPDATE: Bob at eCache has lots more. This may be the first of many financial crisises dumped on the doorstep of the new governor, particularly if Debbie Poritz and the NJ Supreme Court do the expected and demand more money.

It’s supposed to be mighty hot and humid today, temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s. Perfect day for a day trip down the shore. We’re going to Ocean Grove for a day on the beach and at night we’re going to see a show by Christian musician Michael W. Smith. It’s a full day event with different beach activities.

Eric Pfeiffer, the NRO Buzz Reporter, covers the Jon Corzine-Carla Katz affair with a very good piece, “State of Corruption“. The first line of the story: “Are there Democrats in New Jersey without ethical problems?” Regular DynamoBuzz and Enlighten-NewJersey readers already know all the details, but it’s a good summary for those outside the Garden State. And once a story gets mentioned on National Review Online it gets picked up quickly the other members of the VRWC, talk radio and the digital brownshirts.