Outraged by the delegate deficit Sanders faces even after his New Hampshire win, the senator’s backers are taking action.
By Daniel Strauss
02/14/16 06:34 PM EST
Bernie Sanders lost by a hair in Iowa and won by a landslide in New Hampshire. Yet Hillary Clinton has amassed an enormous 350-delegate advantage over the Vermont senator after just two states.
Outraged by that disconnect – which is fueled by Clinton’s huge advantage with Democratic superdelegates, who are not bound by voting results – Sanders supporters are fighting back.
Pro-Sanders threads on Reddit have been burning up with calls for action, with some supporters even reaching out to superdelegates (who are typically Democratic governors, members of Congress, and top state and national party leaders) to lobby them on the Vermont senator’s behalf. Progressive groups are also taking a stand: There are currently two petition campaigns designed to urge superdelegates to reflect the popular vote, rather than the sentiment of party elites.
The purpose of superdelegates was to save voters from political suicide, and while they have tended to follow public voting patterns in recent elections, 2016 could be different.
By Peter Grier, Staff writer FEBRUARY 11, 2016
Does Hillary Clinton have a secret weapon in her battle for the Democratic presidential nomination – “superdelegates” already pledged to support her?
Well, yes, yes she does. But in the end, they probably wouldn’t tip the balance in a close race with rival Bernie Sanders.
Superdelegates aren’t delegates with special powers. Their votes don’t count more than normal elected delegates. They won’t wear spandex or any kind of identifying costume at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
FEBRUARY 10, 2016, 6:08 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2016, 6:10 PM
BY JOE MALINCONICO
PATERSON PRESS
PATERSON – City officials sent municipal employees a notice on Wednesday warning them that they would not be getting their biweekly pay through direct deposits to their bank accounts on Friday.
Instead, all Paterson employees would get old-fashioned paychecks this week – but only if the City Council approves a $7.9 million payroll appropriation at hastily scheduled special meeting on Thursday night.
“There won’t be any release of payroll without the council’s approval,” said Business Administrator Nellie Pou.
Pou said that in order to make the direct deposit payment on Friday she needed to wire the money to the bank on Wednesday. “I can’t do that,” she said.
The city’s payroll process was knocked off schedule when the council in a 4-4 vote on Tuesday rejected the administration’s proposed $22.5 million budget appropriation for February. Opponents said the administration had not implemented enough budget cuts.
FEBRUARY 3, 2016, 5:20 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2016, 6:12 PM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
New Jersey’s Democratic legislative leaders said Wednesday they are close to working out a proposal to fix the state’s dwindling Transportation Trust Fund.
Senate President Steve Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, each said they just have a few details to work out on a proposal to replenish the fund – which pays for improvements to the state’s roads and bridges – runs out of money by June 30. Neither offered details of their plan.
But the two Democrats sparred with their Republican counterparts before an audience of several dozen mayors over the timing of such legislation.
Sweeney and Prieto said first they want to hash out a deal with Governor Christie – something they said has not yet happened – rather that pass a measure that he will veto.
“I don’t think anybody is going to go for something knowing the governor is not going to sign it,” Sweeney said during a panel discussion during the New Jersey League of Municipalities’ annual Mayors’ Legislative Day.
Hillary Clinton at her caucus night rally in Des Moines. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
By John Whitesides
DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton’s struggle in Iowa to fend off underdog Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, reignited questions about her ability to close the deal with Democratic voters and turned up the pressure on her high-profile White House campaign.
The Democratic presidential front-runner, whose campaign ran off the rails in Iowa in 2008 against Barack Obama, was dealt another setback on Monday in the Midwestern state that begins the 2016 race for the presidency.
The former secretary of state, Clinton, 68, was pushed to a virtual tie with Sanders, a 74-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont.
Next up is New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Feb. 9. Sanders has been leading in opinion polls there and has an advantage because it neighbors his home state. A Clinton loss would start to set off alarm bells with her supporters.
“She has had every possible structural and organizational advantage and Sanders fought her to a draw,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
“This is almost a moment by moment rerun of 2008,” Schnur said. “The difference is her competition is not as tough this time.”
Clinton insisted at her post-caucus rally that she was the candidate who could unify her party and prevail against a Republican challenger in the Nov. 8 election but the sense of disappointment was palpable.
Her subdued, six-minute speech contrasted with the ebullient tone of Sanders’ 16-minute speech.
Obama and Ryan, Long at Odds, Said to Meet as Soon as Next Week
Margaret Talev
Angela Greiling Keane
January 22, 2016 — 3:02 PM EST
President Barack Obama and House Speaker Paul Ryan may sit down together at the White House for a long-anticipated meeting as soon as next week, a person familiar with their plans said.
The blizzard bearing down on Washington may force them to postpone if the capital remains shut down at the start of next week.
The two men haven’t spent significant time together since Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, was sworn in as speaker in October. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week that the president hoped that they would have a chance to talk face-to-face “relatively soon.” The person who said the meeting may happen next week asked for anonymity because the timing hasn’t been settled.
It wasn’t clear whether other congressional leaders would take part. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Doug Andres, a spokesman for Ryan, said that “nothing is currently scheduled.” Jen Friedman, deputy White House press secretary, declined to comment.
Obama, 54, and Ryan, 45, have enough in common personally and in some policy areas for the foundation of a relationship, if either of them desired one. They also have enough accrued tension to dissuade either from bothering in Obama’s final year in office.
JANUARY 9, 2016, 11:46 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2016, 12:04 AM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Word bubbled up in November at a Democratic conclave in East Brunswick that state lawmakers were considering new rules on how to configure the state’s legislative map, but they offered no details and quickly moved on to other topics.
Then, just days before a harried year-end session in Trenton, a formal proposal to overhaul the process for redrawing New Jersey’s 40 legislative districts was circulated to Republican members of committees that would have to advance the plan. The proposal was to create at least 10 “competitive” districts using results from selected elections. An Assembly panel approved it in 20 minutes after hearing one public comment, and its chairman did not allow questions from any of its members.
The once-a-decade ritual required by the state constitution to redraw New Jersey’s legislative map has always been a political exercise. Democratic and Republican leaders each appoint five of their members to a commission to draw the maps; they always deadlock on which version is fairest and the deciding vote is cast by someone appointed by the state Supreme Court’s chief justice.
But this year’s push — the first in more than50 years — to significantly alter the process through a constitutional amendment has drawn the most criticism, if not sheer outrage, from the people who will be directly affected by any changes: the legislators themselves.
Depending on how it is drawn, the map could help to determine who is elected to the Legislature and which party holds power in Trenton. That would determine who controls what bills are posted, who gets assigned to what committees and who has final say over judicial and Cabinet-level nominations. Democrats have held the majority in the Legislature since 2004.
JANUARY 9, 2016, 10:30 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2016, 12:15 AM
BY MIKE KELLY
RECORD COLUMNIST |
THE RECORD
HAZLETON, Pa. — A few weeks ago, the phone rang at Jimmy’s Quick Lunch, a popular café that has dished out soup, sandwiches, eggs, neighborly advice and gossip in the center of this rugged former coal-mining town for almost seven decades.
The caller was not placing a takeout order for one of Jimmy’s legendary hot dogs with gravy fries and a milk shake. Instead, Paterson’s civilian police director, Jerry Speziale, was on the line asking if Jimmy’s longtime owner, James Grohol, could give him the name of a neighborhood crime watch activist.
“Maybe he just wanted to get a feel for things,” Grohol said the other day as he reflected on the phone call while flipping burgers in Jimmy’s kitchen.
That the top police administrator in New Jersey’s third-largest city, 115 miles away, would be interested in a neighborhood crime watch in Hazleton, Pa., may seem odd. But phone calls from Speziale are likely to become commonplace now that he has agreed to run Hazleton’s Police Department as its interim chief while he continues to supervise policing in Paterson.
Moonlighting during off-hours has long been a fact of police life. Some officers work nights as private security guards. Others offer advice as consultants or spend weekends as contractors, driving buses or doing other non-police jobs. Some teach college-level classes in policing and criminal justice.
But the idea of the top law enforcement administrator in one city running a department in another state may present a whole new twist on police moonlighting and raises potential conflicts, some experts say.
McGreevey comes to Paterson to defend controversial prison reentry initiative
JANUARY 6, 2016, 9:57 AM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2016, 10:02 AM
BY JOE MALINCONICO
PATERSON PRESS
PATERSON — Former Gov. Jim McGreevey made a surprise appearance at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting in an attempt to defuse criticism aimed at the new prisoner reentry program he is launching in Paterson.
Speaking to the council members, McGreevey said a similar reentry initiative he oversees in Jersey City has achieved low recidivism rates and high employment among its participants by providing them with counseling, job training and other services to ease their transition to life outside prison.
Then the former governor addressed council members’ concerns about Paterson’s use of municipal public works department employees working overtime to complete renovations on the privately-owned Montgomery Street building where some of the post-prison services will be provided.
McGreevey said the “crazed drive to get this done quickly” stemmed from concerns that the city could lose the $180,000 federal grant paying for the work if it were not completed quickly. McGreevey’s explanation matched the one provided by Mayor Jose “Joey” Torres on Monday. The mayor has said the overtime costs would be covered by the federal grant.
In an interview after his presentation to the council, McGreevey said he expected the program to begin operation in the middle of this month with its first group of 11 to 15 participants. He said that it would serve between 175 and 250 released inmates per year. In an effort to dispel some residents’ concerns that parolees would be living at the Montgomery Street building, McGreevey said the site would only be used during business hours to provide services and referrals.
“I believe we’re changing lives through the process of reentry,” said McGreevey, chairman of the board of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, the nonprofit organization working on the project.
For the most part, council members seemed to show deference to the former governor as they complimented his efforts. Not until later in the night, long after McGreevey had left the building, did several council members sharply question administration officials about the project
In the days prior to Christmas, two hastily called Judiciary committee hearings were called in an effort to change the NJ State Constitution, ensuring one party control of the State in perpetuity. Practically no notice was provided, no information was shared, no questions were answered and no experts testified. Regardless of your political leanings, anyone who favors open, transparent, good government should reject what transpired. So far the Star Ledger and the Daily Record editorial boards have denounced this political gamesmanship. Below please find an Op Ed piece regarding this issue.
Lame Duck Redistricting Scheme Raises More Questions than It Answers
By Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll and Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi
Schemes hatched in lame duck sessions of the Legislature should always give reason for pause, but changing voting rights without considerable public discussion is reckless. A proposed constitutional amendment with a significant but unknown impact on the voting rights of New Jersey’s citizens deserves more than the hasty, slapdash, non-transparent treatment the Democrats are giving this measure.
Ignoring the Legislature’s responsibility to hold fact-finding hearings, Chairman John McKeon dismissed concerns about fast-tracking the proposal changing the way the state redraws its legislative districts. “The people of New Jersey will have the opportunity to vote on whatever is on the ballot,” he said at last week’s Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing.
We did not support this plan in part because the sponsors couldn’t answer basic questions. How can voters make an informed decision about a constitutional amendment when the Legislature itself does not fully understand it?
What’s the rush? Legislative districts won’t be reconfigured again until 2021. When the 1966 Constitutional Convention considered the standards used today, it met for three months and had 14 meetings full of expert testimony. Additionally, there were six meetings specifically on apportionment. In this process, the Democrats are advancing a plan after only two brief committee meetings with no expert testimony and only one member of the public commenting.
Their amendment relies on a decades-old report by Dr. Donald Stokes, who served on the Apportionment Commission in 1981 and 1991. Many of his assumptions are based on demographics from almost a generation ago. No one can deny that New Jersey has changed significantly in a quarter century. Does Stokes’ modeling still hold true? Were the demographics he used in 1993 accurate on what we know today?
The amendment deviates from the report on even more critical aspects. Stokes used legislative elections to create his models and proposal, but this amendment ignores them. Instead, it relies on federal and gubernatorial elections that have little to do with drawing up legislative districts. Why exclude legislative races to determine how those districts should be drawn? That’s like using baseball statistics to figure out how football should be played.
Their plan requires only a quarter of districts to be competitive, but allows the remaining 75 percent to have no contest at all. Why not maximize the number of competitive districts? The Stokes test for determining whether a map is fair requires the popular vote across the state to be represented among the districts as a whole and be responsive to the shifts of public opinion. When electoral tides move strongly toward one party, that party should fairly quickly win an effective majority of seats. Using the 2011 legislative election returns, a fair map should have resulted with 21 Democrat and 19 Republican Senators, rather than the 24-16 split that has remained since that election.
Further, the amendment intentionally excludes the equal representation requirement in the state Constitution. Every state respects equal population requirements, the bedrock of American democracy since “no taxation without representation.” Yet, the Democrats intentionally left it out in favor of gerrymandering districts, which almost always shift groups of voters to limit the voting rights of others. They may point to the compactness requirement in the constitution, but this amendment makes federal law pre-eminent.
Why do the sponsors want to make this change? Democrats have held a legislative majority since 2001 and hold their largest majority in 40 years.
The plan was conceived behind closed-doors by Democratic political operatives with essentially a super PAC in East Brunswick. They introduced it to the Assembly Judiciary Committee on November 17, even though it was not mentioned during a previous meeting just three days earlier. With little more information than a Politico article, it passed on a party-line vote the week before Christmas.
By the end of the next day, the Democrats wanted to limit the number of members on the redistricting commission in their plan without explanation. They called the committee back the following Monday, but that meeting started four hours late after most of the media and public left. This contempt for transparency and lack of serious inquiry into this proposal’s ramifications is striking and should be a matter of serious concern to anyone who values New Jersey’s voting rights.
While parties may disagree on the result of the map every ten years, New Jersey’s electoral process has been routinely praised by academics when compared to other states. Why weren’t those experts invited to the committee hearing? Shouldn’t we know what other states do before moving forward with a constitutional amendment? Surely if this plan were all the Democrats say, there would have been a line of academics ready to back them up.
In no other profession would you first enact a policy to know what is in it. The lack of information, transparency and candor is reason enough to be concerned with where the state is headed under a Democratic majority. This constitutional amendment blindly leads the public into forever changing the way New Jersey votes.
In the Legislature, a bill is moving that would propose a constitutional amendment that would change the way the state’s legislative districts are configured.
Rather than basing redistricting on ten-year, census-driven population changes, the amendment would base redistricting on polling data measuring the average vote statewide over nine legislative election cycles.
Democratic proponents of the amendment maintain that it would ensure that ten legislative districts would be competitive, in turn contributing to higher voter turnout. But Republican opponents counter that it could undermine democracy by indefinitely locking in the current Democratic majorities in both legislative houses.
The proposed amendment is being introduced at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that well might affect state legislative redistricting, but in a different way.
The divergent paths of these two actions may clash at some future time, depending on the outcome of the ballot question and the decision of the high court.
If he declared an outsider presidential bid, the former Democratic candidate could have an outsize effect on the race.
Ben Brody @BenBrodyDC
When Jim Webb quit the Democratic presidential race on Oct. 20 amid low poll numbers and a minimal debate presence, the former Virginia senator left open the possibility he’d return for a White House run in a different political guise. Now he appears to be edging closer to making good on it.
On Saturday morning, Webb used Twitter and his Facebook page to attack Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for her handling of Libya during her time as secretary of state.
The lengthy condemnation on Facebook, which said, among other things that “Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya,” came just days before the end of the year, which his team had previously told CNN would be reasonable time for them to make a decision about an independent bid.
Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag.
A run by Webb, who often manages his own social media accounts and has also used them recently to promote a petition in favor of his run and to deliver kudos to Bernie Sanders in his battles with the Democratic National Committee (“nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign,” Webb tweeted), could further complicate the already unpredictable 2016 election.
“Our next commander in chief must define a strategic vision for the country and accept accountability for past actions. Hillary Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya, and the power vacuums that resulted in the rest of the region. She’ll need better answers than the recent nonsensical comment that she advocated taking out Muammar Qadaffi in Libya in order to avert a situation like Syria. The predictable chaos in Libya was bad enough, but it also helped bring about the disaster in Syria. Who is taking her to task for this?https://read.bi/1SbMG7h
She said, “If we had not joined with our European partners and our Arab partners to assist the people in Libya, you would be looking at Syria.” In reality that is what we are looking at. As the Harvard (Kennedy School) Lessons from Libya study of 2013 found, “The biggest misconception about NATO’s intervention is that it saved lives and benefited Libya and its neighbors.” Radical Islamist groups, suppressed under Qaddafi, emerged as the fiercest rebels during the war, highlighted by the September 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues.
Clinton talked at this last DNC debate about her failure as Secretary of State as if she was successful. While she held that office, the U.S. spent about $2 billion backing the Libyan uprising against Qadaffi. The uprising, which was part of the Arab Spring, led directly to Qaddafi being removed from power and killed by rebel forces in 2011. Now some 2,000 ISIS terrorists have established a foothold in Libya. Sophisticated weapons from Qaddafi’s arsenal—including up to 15,000 man-portable, surface-to-air missiles have apparently fallen into the hands of radical Islamists throughout the region. For a Secretary of State (and a Presidential administration) this is foreign policy leadership at its worst.
The first rule of wing-walking (and regime change) is never let go of what you have until you have a firm grasp on where you are going.”
file photo by Boyd Loving New Jersey is the only state which Americans tend to have an unfavorable opinion of
As America prepares to celebrate its 239th birthday this Saturday, YouGov compiled a ‘State of the States’, asking Americans how they feel about each and every state that forms our country.
This research shows that New Jersey is the only state in the country which people tend to have a negative opinion of. 40% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of New Jersey while 30% have a favorable opinion of the state, giving the state a net favorability rating of -10%. In contrast, Alabama, the second least popular state in the country, has a net favorability rating of +8%, as 39% of Americans have a favorable view of Alabama and 31% have an unfavorable opinion. After Alabama the least popular states are Illinois (+9%), Mississippi (+9%) and Indiana (+12%).
Hawaii is the most popular state in the union with a net favorability rating of +56%, with 67% of Americans having a favorable view of the state and only 11% having an unfavorable opinion. Hawaii is followed by Montana (+43%), Wyoming (+42%), Alaska (+42%) and Maine (+42%).
Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco , Mayor of Jersey City,Steve Fulop!
A rival of Mayor Steve Fulop is asking state officials to audit Jersey City’s tax program, saying the city’s recent move to halt new assessments of renovated homes was outside of Fulop’s legal authority. Terrence T. McDonald, The Jersey Journal, Read more
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has already exposed a 14 year-old DC Media cover up involving numerous Muslim-American celebrations of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Now, according to a new report, in their never-ending quest to disqualify Trump and make serial-liar Hillary Clinton president, CBS News has apparently been caught red-handed cutting footage from a focus group mediated by Establishment Republican Frank Luntz that shows American Muslims criticizing the United States:
The Intercept:
[I]n interviews with The Intercept, two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance, and entrapment.
They also said that Frank Luntz, the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.
One woman claimed that she brought up Luntz’s Jewishness:
For example, [Sarah] Harvard wrote that after Luntz asked the group whether they were Americans or Muslims first, she chose to demonstrate the offensive nature of the question by asking, “Well, are you an American or Jewish first?”
From the sound of it, Luntz was far from objective. One participant said:
He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?
According to Ms. Harvard’s own Facebook post, Luntz did not just edit out the inconvenient moments that didn’t fit his desired narrative, he went so far as to silence her when she tore into the American government as a racist institution that has “killed many Muslims.”
He also had silenced me and other participants who have routinely brought up the fact the government has enacted in state violence against the Muslim community — whether that may be through entrapment cases and surveillance programs — and our concerns about institutional racism. He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. He also decided to stop letting me speak when I started talking about how Muslims should start focusing on combatting government policies rather than rushing to condemn terrorism or Islamophobia exclusively. They also cut out portions of where participants talked about media accountability when discussing Islam.
