Decontaminate Polluted Politics

New Jersey's political structure currently discourages opposition by allowing unfair advantages to candidates with great personal wealth or the support of special interests.

New Jersey experimented with public financing for legislative races through a limited "Fair & Clean Elections" test in 2005 and 2007, but that effort was scrapped this year.

Although the state has public financing for gubernatorial elections in both the primary and general elections, no Democrat emerged to mount a serious challenge to Gov. Jon Corzine, despite his vast lack of popularity and the troubled economy.

Indeed, when Corzine was a US Senator he announced that he would seek nomination for governor before the incumbent declared his intentions. Gov. Richard Codey, who became extremely popular after he ascended to the office when James McGreevey resigned, decided not to run. This is an example of economic power as brute force.

Likewise, New York City voters twice adopted laws imposing term limits, but Mayor Mike Bloomberg got City Council to permit him to seek a third term. His likely Democratic challenger is given long odds (and virtually no media attention) despite the fact that, quite literally, Bloomberg should not be in the race.

It is beyond reason to believe that Bloomberg's wealth has not influenced the situation. Monopolies and collusion undermine the prospect of benefits from Capitalism and a grossly disproportionate advantage with money has a similarly destructive impact on democracy.

Term limits have not been a problem for the presidency or New Jersey's governors. A constitutional limit on the number of consecutive terms would help keep democracy alive much as the heart maintains blood flow through the body. Unfortunately, this necessary provision is not enough.

Democracy, like Capitalism, requires competition and it is within our ability to assure such competition in an even more realistic way.

Most attempts to assure a balance have focused on restricting contributions or campaign spending. That is not what is needed. The courts have almost always ruled that such restrictions are unconstitutional obstructions to free speech.

Political competition requires a floor, not a ceiling. Instead of trying to limit what one can do, government may empower all electoral contenders to exercise their free speech in an effective manner. It is the absence of such ability that makes winning difficult.

The capacity to effectively distribute messages is dependent upon having access to the intended recipients. The government should provide free to each candidate who submits petitions a database of voters with mailing address, telephone number, email address, party affiliation, age, and record of participation in all elections held in the last ten years.

By responding to a mailed notice of upcoming elections (sample ballot) or by indicating a preference at the time of registration, or by selection at the polling places, voters themselves may be frequently afforded the opportunity to define contact preferences among direct mail, telephone, email and SMS.

The Internet was developed by government for the benefit of the public. It belongs to the people. Net neutrality should be required, but that is not enough. Each bona fide candidate for public office should be enabled to distribute information about his or her candidacy to voters without impediments created by ISP providers or the law.

If John Q. Public wants to ignore political messages, he is free to do so. AOL should not be allowed to prevent him from getting the opportunity to make that determination.

Every candidate should be allocated television and radio broadcasting time. The airwaves belong to the public and the ability for some of us to use a small piece of them is a fair price for any broadcaster to pay for what they currently get for free.

Likewise, telephone, cable and satellite systems would not exist without the consent of government agencies. Therefore it is entirely reasonable to require such companies to permit candidates to use their services without charge.

As it turns out, the most efficient organization for widespread general mail delivery is also owned by the government. The US Postal Service has a method of low cost bulk mail entry for non-profit organizations. It would not be an undue burden to allow candidates to send mail to voters for free.

Every candidate could also be given a sum of money with which to wage a campaign without resorting to begging special interests that will expect future paybacks. The government belongs to the people and it is appropriate that we use its resources to assure the selection of officials who are beholden to the public and nobody else.

The appropriation of sufficient funds to wage a campaign would be a radically reduced amount if candidates did not need to pay for broadcasting ads, postage or phone service. It would be necessary to only subsidize production, printing, and shoe leather.

Qualification for public financing should be made dependent upon the collection of small contributions from a reasonable number of voters within a jurisdiction and an agreement not to use personal funds or money from outside interests.

That is almost everything, so let’s review the changes that would help Americans preserve democracy as we have discussed them so far:

• Constitutionally-imposed term limits
• A list of voters with contact information based on recipient choices
• Freedom from ISP interference or other impediments
• Free use of public resources: airtime, postage and phone service
• Public campaign financing for those who qualify

As a final note, voters should have an opportunity to choose "none of the above" for every elected office. If we are going to empower politicians to communicate with us, we may as well inspire them to raise the level of debate.

Christie Todd Christie's bobbing & weaving

Ask someone about Christie Todd Christie's position on any issue and you are likely to come up with a dumb answer, because until this point we have yet to hear where the former Bush-appointee stands. His campaign has sought to elude specifics by ducking debates and using many words to say very little about substance.

That is why it is perplexing to hear that Christie would be a worthy challenger against Corzine after having predicted that Lonegan will emerge as the GOP nominee. I do not agree with Lonegan on a long list of issues, but I can at least respect his integrity and determination.

Christie bores me to sleep. Corrupt and incompetent Gov. Jon Corzine will easily defeat the liberal Republican because New Jerseyans will not get excited over nothing.

Here are seven issues that are guaranteed to sink Christie's general election campaign:

1. He bought a job in the Bush administration by raising $500,000 for the 2000 Republican presidential campaign, including a good deal of that from within his own family.

2. He gave former Attorney General John Ashcroft a no-bid monitoring contract worth $25 to $50 million.

3. He gave another no-bid monitoring contract worth $10 million to a law firm whose partners then returned the favor by giving his campaign $25,000 in donations and raising thousands more from clients and other contacts.

4. He gave yet another no-bid monitoring contract worth $5 million to the former federal prosecutor in New York who decided not to indict Christie's brother Todd, although it seems Todd Christie (that is his real name) did exactly the same or worse as the 14 people who were indicted for the kind of stock market manipulation, which caused the current national economic crisis.

5. He gave a woman involved with trafficking 14-year-old girls for prostitution a plea bargain that resulted in five years probation.

6. He broke all sorts of rules to get his name off a list of US Attorneys targeted for firing by the Bush administration because they did not give Republicans a partisan advantage by persecuting Democrats; and his name dropped off the list when he made a particularly public probe of US Sen. Bob Menendez during his 2006 campaign, even though no charges resulted from that media-rich investigation.

7. Christie is named in a federal tort claim lawsuit charging that as US Attorney, he used his federal power to coerce a party to a civil lawsuit in which the plaintiff had previously been represented by Christie in his private practice.



Of course, I can call him "Christie Todd Christie" because he represents the same liberal wing of the Republican Party that has been exterminated in much of the United States and as conservative Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine said, he stands "a little to the right of Corzine" in much the same manner as ever-popular ex-Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

Christie's bobbing & weaving seems to make sense, because if Republicans think about their primary election choices, his sinking will take place a few months earlier than New Jersey's political establishment has planned.

Candidate Christie Cooks the Books

The prospective gubernatorial nominee who has been universally embraced by GOP organization leaders is using a falsehood to define his record as a Bush-administration political appointee and distorting math to manipulate voter opinion.

His record of sending 130 corrupt politicians to justice as U.S. Attorney is the lynchpin of Christopher Christie's gubernatorial campaign, but the figmentary number has been unquestioned by the main stream media and the Republican's campaign could not supply proof to support its accuracy.

An independent review of Christie's record found one instance where the former federal prosecutor claimed to have nabbed 150 crooked politicians, but most accounts assert that his victims number 130.

Our extensive review could identify only 89 elected or politically appointed defendants who were brought to justice during Christie's tenure. To be sure, that's not an insignificant number but instead of standing on the truth, Christie's campaign fudged the numbers.

Christie's campaign manager and a top strategist refused to respond to requests for verification, but said they stand by the assertion.

In an attempt to denounce Lonegan’s flat tax plan, Christie's campaign fudged the numbers the same way.

Instead of telling the truth, which is that without exemptions or deduction the Lonegan plan could result in a tax hike for some low income wage earners; Christie's campaign fudged the numbers again.

Peter Lawrence, a former state treasurer, was cited as the source of a claim that Lonegan’s flat tax plan would produce a tax hike for 70 percent of New Jersey residents.

Lawrence also mistakenly predicted that stock market increases would fund public employee pensions without state contributions. Those accounts are now in the red by about $75 billion.

The Lonegan plan would increase taxes only for individuals who earn less than $30,000 and economists say that it could stimulate higher income for those low wage earners.

"Steve Lonegan's economic plan is the best medicine for New Jersey's ailing state economy," said Dr. Arthur Laffer, the advisor to President Ronald Reagan who defined supply-side economics.

During the last debate between arch-conservative Lonegan and his more liberal opponent, Christie said he became a lawyer because he is "not good at math and science." Lonegan seized on the comment to rip into Christie's failure to articulate a tax plan.

The Annointed Con

I intended to title this article, 'The Annointed One,' but a typo offered a much smarter name to go identify with the GOP establishment's purpose behind its intended coronation.

I thought the argument of inevitability was ridiculous when Hillary Clinton used it in the early primaries last year. It is no less of a fraud when applied to the Bush-appointed media darling whose cloak of lovability disolved once he bathed in the pool of political opportunism, which leads to a question: When did Chris Christie become the only Republican who can beat Jon Corzine?

It appears that Christie Todd Christie may not be able to beat Steve Lonegan in a GOP primary, which should be unsurprising given the popularity of liberal Republicans these days.

So treacherous has the GOP become for moderate and liberal members that they are likely to be eaten alive by the carnivorous conservatives who have made the Republican Party attractive to just 20 percent of all Americans.

Rats fleeing this sinking ship, such as Pennsylvania's US Sen. Arlen Specter, show that the party of Lincoln is now officially the party of Shrinkin' (and if the reader could see me now, you would notice that I am a-winkin' like Sarah Palin).

Still, if Christie has a chance against Corzine then so would any Republican nominee (even if that happened to be an actual Republican such as Steve Lonegan) and the reason would be because voters come to recognize the incumbent multi-millionaire as an aristocrat and not a Democrat.

Beside paying off Carla Katz and greasing the palms of political bosses, climbing in bed with those who profit from state corruption, closing a dozen hospitals and driving our government to the point of ruin, Corzine has done very little.

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Corzine is just singing the blues as New Jersey is looted by corporate crooks, eroded by rising property taxes or unemployment and buried in wasteful debt.

The moniker 'Christie Todd Christie' is another result of my poor typing, but that is also a high-powered analysis of the liberal Republican's presumed appeal and the genuine disdain experienced among the GOP rank-and-file.

As Governor, Christie Todd Whitman combined the patronage preferences of a Republican loyalist with the economic shrewdness of a lottery winner, the ideology of a Democratic liberal and a sense of ethics that was about as perverted as it could get -- until Jim McGreevey and his cronies rolled into town.

Christie is losing his shine as a media darling now that attention has turned to his awarding of lucrative, no-bid contracts to friends who earned millions of dollars monitoring companies as part of settlements in criminal cases.It would be interesting to speculate about whose administration would most resemble McGreevey, Corzine or Christie.

Still, not everyone is counting out the preordained choice of political insiders, despite poll numbers that show his support weakening.

Three-time Liberal Party nominee and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told reporters that Christie is the only candidate for governor who can solve New Jersey's budget crisis.

After finding a $2 billion budget gap upon his arrival at City Hall, Giuliani left his successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a projected $2.8 billion deficit that ballooned to $4.8 billion in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The guy who wears women's clothing also had the audacity to refer to Christie's "tax and spend opponent in the primary" because Lonegan’s flat tax proposal would cost some workers slightly more than the current state income tax.

Like Christie, Guiliani ignored the concern voters have expressed about the crushing burden of property taxes, as if the real problem is whether my state income tax bill is $1,750 or $1,950 and not whether homeowners must pay $5,000 or $12,500!

In an email message to Christie’s supporters, campaign manager Bill Stepien wrote: “The only option Corzine has is to attack because he has nothing else to stand on.” Then to prove he has a powerful message, Christie began a series of wild attack ads that attempt to sully Lonegan's conservative ideas.

Christie is not the only Republican who can beat Corzine, but he seems like the only contender capable of neglecting issues as much as the incumbent.