TRENTON — Facing a difficult battle to take control of the lower house of the state Legislature in November, state Assembly Republicans defended Gov. Chris Christie’s stewardship of New Jersey’s economy on Thursday.
“Some people want to blame the governor. The governor has been the only thing between your wallet and the state Assembly Democrats, period,” Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-Union) said at a press conference Thursday in front of the Statehouse, standing with several members of his caucus and a couple non-incumbent candidates.
“He’s vetoed or blocked all of the tax-raising attempts by the Democrats,” Bramnick said.
Democrats hold a 48-32 majority in the Assembly, and have been in command of the lower house since 2002. With just a few competitive Assembly races expected in November, most who pay attention to state elections give Republicans little chance of taking control.
Christie, a Republican, has an approval rating in the 30s in New Jersey as he travels around the country preparing for a widely expected run for president.
Federal data released Wednesday showed that New Jersey’s economy was one of the slowest growing in the nation in 2014.
If the matter was rejected by NJ’s Supreme Court, it’s highly unlikely that The Federal Supreme Court would go the other way. The SCOTUS tends to lean slightly more to the right than their NJ colleagues. There’s also massive nationwide ramifications for the SCOTUS to consider here, as this same issue applies throughout the country. Many States and local Governments are operating at near bankruptcy. The fat lady is doing voice scales in her dressing room.
Yep, we need some real longer-term, structural change in NJ govt spending. A few ideas being thrown around include open bidding NJ state road & infrastructure projects to private sector firms to cut out union & Mafioso graft, increased pension contributions and health insurance premiums paid by state & municipal employees and retirees for health. Asking state & municipal workers to roll back many of the pension enhancements they’ve been given since the 1990s under Florio and Whitman, i.e. maximum pensionable income should be capped like California at $110K, with pensions at 50% of that, ie $55K, in-line with current PFRS avg $57K. New employees should be moved to 401(k) style defined contribution plans, not defined benefit anymore so that politicians can no longer interfere in pension funding issues and raid the funds for Union pet projects like Xanadu, and bye-bye to accumulated leave payouts upon retirement at up to six months of avg final comp rate – “use it or lose it”. Taxes are probably going up too if all of these concessions are made, the sooner the better.
Read the NJ Supreme Court’s full pen/ben decision here
In a long-awaited decision today that comes as a boon to Gov. Chris Christie and a blow public sector unions, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the Republican’s administration does not have to make a slated contribution to a beleaguered pension and benefit system, striking down an earlier lower court decision that ruled the opposite.
In the 115 page document, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote on behalf of the majority that the court cannot be a mediator of fiscal troubles “in place of the political branches.” (Brush/PolitickerNJ)
New Jersey’s Top Court Rules Christie Can Skip Pension Payments
New Jersey’s highest court ruledon Tuesday that Gov. Chris Christie could skip the pension payments he promised to make in the signature law of his tenure, averting a huge fiscal crisis just weeks before the state closes its books for the year. (Zernike/The New York Times)
Editors Note : No Mr President Camden is not an example of hope , its just another example of policies put in place by the Democrat Party that have totally destroyed a city and an example policies that are totally destroying a country ! Camden , like Detroit and Baltimore is another warning of what not to do ! Camden is the future if we don’t change our ways .
Is the media really going to pretend Camden is anything but a dump , a disastrous failure and a warning?
PBA Prez Colligan to Camden-touring Obama: ‘You are being misled’
In a letter today to the Camden-touring President of the United States, the State Policemen’s Benevolent Association told Barack Obama that he has been misled to believe “PR spin” that the Camden County Metro Police Department is a success in battling violent crime that besets the waterfront south state city. (Pizarro/PolitickerNJ)
MAY 14, 2015, 11:38 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015, 11:45 PM
BY LINDY WASHBURN AND DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
Pushback came from many sides Thursday as Democratic lawmakers in Trenton unveiled a plan to corral high out-of-network charges and protect consumers from surprise medical bills when they go to the hospital.
A chain of Hudson County hospitals called the bill “a massive gift to large insurance companies.” The state medical society said it would have “a dangerous and deleterious effect on health care quality in New Jersey.” It labeled a provision that would have an arbitrator settle billing disputes “an insult.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars is at stake as the measure seeks to limit the amount hospitals and doctors can charge for their services. The measure calls for full written disclosure of expected charges for hospital patients and creation of a database to set the limits on what out-of-network providers can charge insurance companies. It would prevent patients from being charged more than the in-network rate for any service when they chose an in-network hospital and doctor for their care.
The savings — to patients, insurers, and those who pay for insurance coverage, including state and local governments and school systems — could be enormous. Opponents, however, say it could drive hospitals and doctors out of business.
AP New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justices Lee A. Solomon, left, and Jaynee LaVecchia, right, listen as Associate Justice Anne M. Patterson asks a question during a hearing Wednesday, May 6, 2015, in Trenton
Taxpayers Face Tax Increase as N.J justices appear divided along partisan lines in pension battle
MAY 6, 2015, 12:45 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015, 11:30 PM
BY SALVADOR RIZZO
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
The state Supreme Court appeared split along ideological lines Wednesday on one of the biggest legal questions in New Jersey: Can Governor Christie ignore a pension-reform law he signed in 2011 and cut funding for the distressed retirement system?
Associate Justice Barry Albin, a veteran of the court’s liberal wing and a Democratic appointee, hammered Christie’s attorney and sounded incredulous that the Republican governor wanted to strike down a key part of his own pension overhaul. At one point, Albin suggested the courts could order a tax increase to meet pension-funding requirements.
Associate Justice Anne Patterson, a Christie appointee on the court’s conservative side, grilled the attorneys for public-worker unions suing over the funding reductions. Patterson said the courts were no place to be deciding state budget priorities and noted that Christie would have to make deep cuts to hospitals or schools in order to round up the funds missing from the pension system.
The outcome may hinge on the court’s lone independent, Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia. She asked tough questions of both sides and did not indicate which way she was leaning.
The city got the full brunt of state coercion, decade after decade
JEFFREY A. TUCKER
April 29, 2015
If you have seen The Wire, you know the score. There are consequences to state management of any social order. Baltimore is a paradigmatic case. How long can people continue to evade the obvious lessons?
It began more than 100 years ago with the imposition of state segregation. This was the original sin that created a second-class of citizenship and racial ghettos for the first time since the end of the Civil War. Every policy response follows from there, with one coercive mistake following another. This town became the backyard playground for the ruling-class planners in Washington, DC. The intellectuals and lawmakers behind these policies cannot reasonably claim to escape responsibility.
Baltimore blew up in riots and fires in the days following the astonishinglycruel death of Freddie Gray (and the stonewalling of the police department about how and why he was killed). But it is a mistake to focus the blame on this incident alone.
What happened in Baltimore is the product of the drug war, a racially punitive policing system, failed public services, segregated public housing, urban renewal, endless rounds of progressive education reform, a highly regulated labor market that cuts off economic opportunity, occupational licensure, gun control, and permanent martial law that makes everyone feel like prisoners.
Baltimore got the full brunt of it all, at every stage, decade after decade.
What do all these policies have in common? They represent the fatal error, common for the better part of a century, of believing that policy elites can manage the social order better than the social order can manage itself. Only the ruling class can decide where and how people should live, how they will be educated, what they can buy and sell, the terms of labor contracts, what businesses come and go, and who gets to enter into certain occupations and the terms under which they may do so. The government would do it all: build and maintain the housing, provide the education, make the jobs, set the pay, enable the security, and administer the justice.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Saturday that the culture wars show off the cozy relationship between Democrats and corporate America.
Speaking in South Carolina, Cruz bemoaned the “perfect storm of the Democratic Party and big business coming together,” according to Bloomberg.
The Texas Republican was specifically referencing the recent fight over Indiana’s law on religious freedom. But Cruz noted that there’d been similar spats in Houston and elsewhere in the U.S., and insisted conservatives needed to gear up for the battle to defeat gay marriage.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Cruz said.
Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe Entirely of the Democratic Party’s Own Making
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON April 28, 2015 2:34 PM
A few weeks ago, there was an election in Ferguson, Mo., the result of which was to treble the number of African Americans on that unhappy suburb’s city council. This was greeted in some corners with optimism — now, at last, the city’s black residents would have a chance to see to securing their own interests. This optimism flies in the face of evidence near — St. Louis — and far — Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco . . . St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since the 1940s, and in its most recent elections for the board of aldermen there was no Republican in the majority of the contests; the city is overwhelmingly Democratic, effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.
Baltimore has seen two Republicans sit in the mayor’s office since the 1920s — and none since the 1960s. Like St. Louis, it is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department. Philadelphia has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948. The last Republican to be elected mayor of Detroit was congratulated on his victory by President Eisenhower. Atlanta, a city so corrupt that its public schools are organized as a criminal conspiracy against its children, last had a Republican mayor in the 19th century. Its municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, but the last Republican to run in Atlanta’s 13th congressional district did not manage to secure even 30 percent of the vote; Atlanta is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.
Contrary to the emotional blackmail some leftists are attempting to peddle, Baltimore is not America’s problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem. Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor.
In 2012, after four years of his own failed policies, President Obama won a whopping87.4% of the Baltimore City vote. Democrats run the city of Baltimore, the unions, the schools, and, yes, the police force. Since 1969, there have only been only been two Republican governors of the State of Maryland.
Elijah Cummings has represented Baltimore in the U.S. Congress for more than thirty years. As I write this, despite his objectively disastrous reign, the Democrat-infested mainstream media is treating the Democrat like a local folk hero, not the obvious and glaring failure he really is.
Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat.
For all her recent efforts to prove her progressive credentials to Democratic primary voters and caucus participants, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has not made those on her party’s left entirely comfortable with her. And she never will.Because of that, a credible alternative would have the capacity to rally progressive Democrats behind a challenge to the former first lady, possibly even creating an entertaining skirmish or two.
The only question right now is if a serious contender will emerge. Not everyone, after all, would be equally capable of galvanizing anti-Hillary sentiment within the Democratic Party.
At first glance, the idea of a backbencher mounting even a moderately interesting challenge to Clinton is preposterous. After all, she will have the deepest war chest in history, begins with a lengthy résumé of accomplishments, has a flood of endorsements and institutional support, and holds the “first woman president” card in her hand.
But Clinton has as much chance of convincing Democratic progressives she is truly one of them as Mitt Romney had of convincing tea party conservatives and evangelicals he shared their values and views. That is: zero chance.
There is simply too much suspicion of Clinton on the left — and too much history to allow progressives to embrace her completely before they must.
APRIL 21, 2015, 1:45 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015, 10:08 PM
BY MELISSA HAYES
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
The New Jersey Education Association will no longer work with Governor Christie on revamping pension and health benefits for public employees, ending what the governor had called an “unprecedented accord” at the heart of his plan to reform the system.
Instead, the NJEA said on Tuesday that it would focus on a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen unions that challenges Christie’s decision to significantly cut the state’s pension contributions. A Superior Court judge has sided with the unions, ruling Christie must make the larger payments, and the state Supreme Court will hear the governor’s appeal next month.
“If we had it to do over again, we would never have signed the memo describing concepts we discussed with the commission,” NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer said in his statement, referring to the panel the governor appointed to make recommendation shoring up the pension system. “It was misrepresented by the governor, and that distracted everyone from the real priority: requiring the state to fund the pensions for which our members have paid their share on each and every payday throughout their careers.”
Christie, who had trumpeted the deal with his biggest political foe, turned to social media to respond to the union and to attack Democrats who joined the unions’ lawsuit and called for him to make larger pension payments.
No Copies of Clinton Emails on Server, Lawyer Says
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTMARCH 27, 2015
WASHINGTON — An examination of the server that housed the personal email account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used exclusively when she was secretary of state showed that there are no copies of any emails she sent during her time in office, her lawyer told a congressional committee on Friday.
After her representatives determined which emails were government-related and which were private, a setting on the account was changed to retain only emails sent in the previous 60 days, her lawyer, David Kendall, said. He said the setting was altered after she gave the records to the government.
“Thus, there are no [email protected] emails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized,” Mr. Kendall said in a letter to the House select committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
The committee subpoenaed the server this month, asking Mrs. Clinton to hand it over to a third party so it could determine which emails were personal and which were government records.
At a news conference this month, Mrs. Clinton appeared to provide two answers about whether she still had copies of her emails. First, she said that she “chose not to keep” her private personal emails after her lawyers had examined the account and determined on their own which ones were personal and which were State Department records. But later, she said that the server, which contained personal communication by her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, “will remain private.” The server was kept at their home in Chappaqua, N.Y., which is protected around the clock by the Secret Service.
Mrs. Clinton’s disclosure on Friday only heightened suspicions by the committee’s chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, about how she handled her emails, and it is likely to lead to more tension between her and the committee.
Mr. Gowdy said in a written statement that it appeared that Mrs. Clinton deleted the emails after Oct. 28, when the State Department first asked her to turn over emails that were government records.
Dems want to empower Boehner
By Mike Lillis – 03/22/15 06:00 AM EDT
House Democrats fighting for leverage in the GOP Congress are hoping they can empower an unlikely ally: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Democrats are outnumbered by more than 50 members – and have almost no power to bring bills to the floor.
But they see Boehner as a willing compromiser on must-pass legislation like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling – once the Speaker can convince his troops that the partisan route endorsed by his conservative wing has been denied.
By banding together in veto-sustaining majorities against conservative proposals demanded by Boehner’s right flank, Democrats hope to both sink those GOP measures and grease the skids for more moderate compromises.
“[The Republicans] have a majority party that’s deeply divided,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip, said Thursday from his office in the Capitol.
“And … what we’ve learned is if we stick together – and we have been sticking together, we’ve been very unified – that it can empower Speaker Boehner at some point in time to say, ‘Look, I tried every which way I can think of to accomplish the objectives that our caucus wants to do. But if I can’t accomplish those, I will not allow the government to shut down, the debt limit to be not extended, or other things that are harmful to the country,’” Hoyer said.
Those dynamics were on full display in the recent fight over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Charges against U.S. Senator Menendez possible this week: WSJ
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal investigators could file criminal corruption charges as early as this week against U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Menendez, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would be charged in New Jersey, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the investigation.
Allegations against Menendez involve using his office to promote the business interests of a Democratic Party donor and friend in exchange for gifts. Menendez has denied wrongdoing.
Right after he finished his term as governor, one politician many years ago decided to make a very big leap. He had the chutzpah to begin running for president. This little-known former governor, not from a big state, spent most of his time in Iowa and New Hampshire. There, he sought to know everyone of importance who played a role in shaping the political fortunes of aspiring presidential candidates. No crowd was too small, no event too minor. He was everywhere and after a certain amount of time the people of the Hawkeye State and the Granite State got to feel comfortable with him and he developed a following.
When the other, better-known names started to show up, they soon realized that they were too late. This little-known former governor had locked up the key endorsements because he had done the early work of contact and cultivation. The primary reason for his early auspicious electoral success was that this was his only job: running for president.
