To make sure something like this never happens in Moorestown:

SAN DIEGO — Fire departments around the nation are cutting jobs, closing firehouses and increasingly resorting to “rolling brownouts” in which they shut different fire companies on different days as the economic downturn forces many cities and towns to make deep cuts that are slowing their responses to fires and other emergencies.

Philadelphia began rolling brownouts this month, joining cities from Baltimore to Sacramento that now shut some units every day. San Jose, Calif., laid off 49 firefighters last month. And Lawrence, Mass., north of Boston, has laid off firefighters and shut down half of its six firehouses, forcing the city to rely on help from neighboring departments each time a fire goes to a second alarm....

The risks of cutting fire service were driven home here last month when Bentley Do, a 2-year-old boy who was visiting relatives, somehow got his hands on a gum ball, put it in his mouth, started laughing and then began choking....

It is only 600 steps from the front door of the neatly kept stucco home where the boy was staying to the nearest fire station, just down the block. But the station was empty that evening: its engine was in another part of town, on a call in an area usually covered by an engine that had been taken out of service as part of a brownout plan.

Providing for public safety is the most important service government must undertake, and a myopic focus on taxes without a correspondingly close look at what those taxes are paying for results in outcomes like these.

Even with all the economic travails of the last two years, we stilll live in the richest country the world has ever seen.  Is this really the best we can do?

From today's New York Times:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation and sending working parents scrambling to find care for them.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters...

Closer to home, Camden is about to shut the doors to its libraries.

What I want to know, though, is when did we have an honest conversation about what services we think our government ought to provide?  Shouldn't we try to have that conversation before we end up in a place we don't recognize? 

On August 4, President Obama's birthday, a CNN/Opinion Research poll is released that finds 41% of Republicans believing definitely or probably that President Obama was not born in the U.S.  A link :http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40644.html.

Which leads to two obvious questions:  1.  Is the Republican party doomed to obsolescence, and 2.  Is there really a legitimate validity to their relentless criticism of President Obama?  Perhaps a third question:  what happened to the respected party of Eisenhower, Ford, Christine Whitman, Richard Lugar, even Jim Saxton?  Where did it go?

Never mind that there is the irrefutable evidence of yellowed newspapers in archives showing the birth announcement of Barack Obama in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.  Never mind that his birth certificate has actually gone through the process of being authenticated.  How can an electorate, of which a whopping 41% believe that President Obama was born elsewhere, have any credibility?  How can they be taken seriously?

What really affects the legitimate, respectable, but rapidly shrinking rationale wing of the Republican party is their diminished ability to actually have legitimate criticism of the President.  When does crazy end and legitimate discussion begin?

In an never ending struggle to push the center to the far right, more and more crazy ideas and proposals keep coming out of Republican candidates nationwide.  Many of them are just catering to the narrow slice of tea party craziness, seeking an edge in a contested primary.  The tactics are increasingly crazy and irrational statements, such as the candidate from Tennessee advocating secession from the Union.  Birthers galore, trying to outdo each other.  Fox News is obsessed with two minor "black panther" characters from election day 2008, somehow thinking it's a national issue and also relevant today.    The net result is that what seemed crazy a few years ago, is now more "accepted", more "mainstream". But only because crazy keeps pioneering new frontiers, continually stretching the borders.  There are a lot of historical parallels.  Not all of them turned out well.  Look for examples in the next few days.

It's not the Democrats, nor the Republicans, nor the Tea Partiers, nor the Independents who lose when lunacy becomes a significant part of the political vernacular.  No, it's the American public.  I hear a lot of comments saying "that I'm concerned about the direction of this country."   Count me in too, but for different reasons.

the following is presented as a public service to help everyone understand the Trenton Republican  doublespeak.

A Christie Dictionary

by: deciminyan

Mon Jul 19, 2010 at 05:36:55 PM EDT

Promoted by Jason Springer: Something tells me we could do a whole "Christiespeak" series where we look at what he says and what it really means.

Sarah Palin's recent attempt to coin new words for the English language such as "refudiate" is humorous, but easy for the reader to discern her actual meaning.  Governor Christie is more subtle, and his bastardization of the English language is a bit more difficult to follow.  As a service to Blue Jersey readers, I have started a Chris Christie Dictionary.  This can be useful to  understand the governor's pronouncements.   Feel free to add more definitions in the comments to this post.

Tax. An evil method by which the government steals money from people for no apparent reason.

User fee. A way to tax people without calling it a tax.

Shared Sacrifice: A philosophy whereby taxes increase for lower income citizens so that millionaires can share in the benefits of that revenue.

Government ethics: see: Reform Jersey Now

Union: A group of workers whose sole goal is to rip off taxpayers.

Teacher: An individual worker whose sole goal is to rip off taxpayers.

Superintendent: see: Teacher

Privatization: The process of taking jobs from state workers and giving them to cronies at a higher cost to the taxpayer.

Reform Jersey Now:  Unknown - never heard of this term.

Charter School: A method to circumvent that pesky "separation of church and state" thingy.

Eminent Domain?  I thought I'd never hear those words from this current Moorestown Township Council.  After all the drama in past years about property rights when the historical preservation ordinance was debated, I would not have expected a Council led by Dan Roccato to advocate eminent domain. Eminent domain has become a conservative cause in past years after the 2005 SCOTUS decision on Kelo v City of New London, although fairly enough, there are various conservative responses to the concept of eminent domain. 

Actually I did not hear the words "eminent domain".  I heard words like " condemnation" and phrases that described assuming ownership by other means, although everyone in the audience understood what was being talked about, at the July 14 Council meeting.  Eminent domain is certainly a frightful topic, particularly in a community like Moorestown, where respect for individual property rights is high.  It appears that our Council does feel comfortable in deciding which unsightly properties are acceptable for eminent domain (no matter what it is called), and which ones to simply ignore. 

When I was on counsel, people were always pushing privatization. I was told, privatize the water system and save money. Of course, had we sold out to New Jersey American our water rates would have skyrocketed. I was told, privatize trash pick up. Having represented a number of trash companies, I knew the trick there - low prices on the initial contract, slam the town on the renewal. Privatization does not work, it is expensive, it is inefficient and it leads to corruption. No wonder our Governor favors it.

A word from State Sen. Loretta Weinberg

http://www.bluejersey.com/user/Senator%20Loretta%20Weinberg

Privatizing government: This is more of the same from the Christie administration. Undermine our public school system, our public employees, our public TV network, and then parcel out government to private industry. Is that like the private industry successes of the Parsons' Adventure or EnCap or Xanadu?  But the most appalling point I read about the report was that the government should get out of the pre-school business and maybe increase class size from an average of 15 to 22. I have not seen the whole report and will today, but if that note is correct, I guess Christie is planning to make one of his campaign comments into a self-fulfilling prophecy - "Pre-School is Baby Sitting!" Then of course, if we privatize government, we can really cut taxes and just charge "user fees" to everyone. You can bet these ideas will be fought by some of us (and I think the majority of us) with full battle gear.

A word from Jason Springer

Christie helping the unemployed by firing people.

http://www.bluejersey.com/diary/16169/christie-helping-the-unemployed-by-firing-people

Sometimes the Christie logic completely escapes me. Take this recommendation from the Christie privatization team:

The task force also said New Jersey's 18 career centers to help the unemployed with job training and searches could be privatized.

So the way the Christie administration is going to help the unemployed is by firing more people? Really?

Recently the Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial about the increasing lack of bipartisan effort in Washington.  The editorial observes the obvious: "The two parties rarely agree on minor matters".  With national and international affairs at crisis stage, the two political parties, and their followers tend to focus on scoring political points, rather than colllaboratively solve significant problems.  As a result, we are stalled on much needed domestic issues such as financial reform and jobs creation.  The Inquirer continues to state "The crisis has grown worse partly because the more partisan voters in both parties have been voting out lawmakers whom they view as too cooperative with the opposition".  No question there.  The GOP is being challenged from the hard right, with various groups that could be loosely labeled as tea-partiers, but even these groups are somewhat fragmented and find difficulty in reaching agreement.  The progressive wing of the Democratic Party presses for more ideological purity as well, with recent challenges to Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, and a few years ago, Joe Leiberman in Connecticut.  In Pennsylvania this spring, Democratic voters rejected their establishment party candidate Arlen Spector because he was not sufficiently "Democrat".

Probably more dramatic, and with possibly enduring consequences, are the intra-party challenges by the various tea party factions.  They find Republican incumbents, such as Senator Bob Bennett in Utah, who they deem as lacking ideological purity, and they muster enough of an effort to oust them, sometimes through conventional primary elections, sometimes through more arcane methods, such as party nominating conventions.  As a result, candidates, particularly Republican candidates, from conservative states are evolving to extreme conservativeness, with no apologies or consternation from those factions supporting these extreme candidates.  Today's best example is Sharron Angle as the Republican nominee for the US Senate in Nevada.  Prior to Angle's primary win, Harry Reid had an exceptionally difficult re-election effort in 2010.  Angle may be "ideologically pure" at least as defined by some tea-partiers, but has views that probably reflect less than 10% of the voters in the United States.  Perhaps only 15 or 20% in Nevada, at best. 

But where does this lead us to?  There are two consequences for these intra-party challenges, whether Democratic or Republican:  either lose in the general election, in many cases losing an opportunity for a party turnover, such as in Nevada, or be elected, and widening the divide even further.  Voters may be demanding a change in our legislative bodies, but by the tactics that many are asking for, the result may be a U.S. Congress evolving to further gridlock and unwillingness to compromise for any initiative.  As a result, the great middle of our electorate may end up being further and further frustrated with the lack of effectiveness and results of our Senate and House of Representatives. 

My prediction right now?  That the far, hard right factions loosely characterized as tea-partiers will win a few small victories, leaving them intoxicated with power, but with no real results.  A few conservative states will have even more conservative representatives to the House and Senate, but with no more ability to find solutions.  The only likely result is greater intransigence and unwillingness to work together, compromise and find solutions.  Along with a few victories, there will be lost opportunities.  For the Republican party eager for a symbolic victory by defeating Harry Reid in a mid-term election, they are likely to be sorely disappointed, and feeling a bit of buyer's regret with their dealings with the tea-party factions. 

Campaign Financing: Fixing Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Congress is going through all sorts of contortions trying to look like they are fixing the Supreme Courts' decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. New reporting requirements are being touted as the fix to the sale of elections to corporate interests. They are not. Don't let yourself be fooled.

There is a fix to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. It is easy. It is simple. It will not be done. The fix is to end the legal fiction that corporations are persons. All it would take to end the legal fictions is the following legislation:

Corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States. Corporations are granted the following limited rights; 1. the right to sue and be sued in contract and tort; 2. the right to own real and personal property; 3. the right to enter into contracts with persons and other corporations and to be bound by contracts; 4. the right to truthfully advertise the goods and services produced or provided by the corporation to persons and other corporations. Corporations, their officers, owners, and employees may be held liable for the acts of the Corporation where warranted under the Civil and Criminal laws of the United States and the individual States, Territories, and Districts of the United States. Corporations shall have no rights not enunciated herein.

It really is that simple.

There is a good deal of misinformation circulating about the Town Hall Project. In fact the bids received were consistent with the known costs of the restoration project. After the fire, Town Council was informed that it would cost approximately 12 million dollars to rebuild the Town Hall to the condition it was prior to the fire. When I left Town Council, it was known and understood that the additions which were foreseen would likely increase the cost of the project to approximately 16 million dollars. While there are ways of cutting costs (generally by using less expensive and lower quailty materials, less energy efficient design and reducing the size of a project in square feet), I find it curious that anyone would expect that this project could have been accomplished for 11 ½ million and that the cost of a project would decrease over time.