Keep your opinion to yourself

Environmentalists, small business owners, taxpayers and commuters who pay tolls were not listed among the special interest groups briefed in advance about Gov. Jon Corzine’s proposal to raise tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, Atlantic City Expressway by 800 percent and start charging motorists along Route 440.

In order to escape the vast public debt Corzine plans to borrow $38 billion, for which the commuters and truckers who use toll roads will pay more than $200 billion during the next 75 years, without asking permission from voters.

Borrowing $38 billion at a cost of $200 billion is no way to get out of debt.Polls show that nearly 60% of New Jersey residents oppose Corzine’s scheme, 15% support it and 25% don’t have an opinion, but undeterred by public opinion, Corzine is pushing the legislature to pass the plan in March.

Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan and South Jersey radio personality Seth Grossman were arrested last weekend while peacefully protesting Corzine’s proposal.

Corzine’s reputation as a financial genius seems a silly. Maybe the guy has no more fiscal ingenuity that someone who hit the lottery.

Corzine also plans to borrow $2.5 billion, over and above the toll road scheme, to build new schools but he does not want to put that measure before the voters either.

Corzine's School Switcheroo

All six African-American senators opposed Gov. Jon Corzine's state school aid plan but the measure cleared both houses of the Legislture with the minimum number of votes needed for passage. The senate vote was 21-8, with the Assembly approving the measure with a 41-36 vote.

Corzine hailed passage of the complex bill, which he made a centerpiece of the legislative agenda he promoted during the short lame-duck session that followed November's legislative elections. Nothing got done on the ethics reform package that was promised so many times, but we were also spared massive toll hikes and billions in new public debt.

"The new law replaces a flawed system with an equitable, balanced and nonpartisan formula that addresses the needs of all students, regardless of where they live," said Corzine. "This formula puts the needs of all children on an equal footing and will give them the educational resources they need for success."

Corzine's new formula will cost poor cities hundreds of millions of dollars, but lobbyists from the New Jersey Education Association were able to overcome objections by minority lawmakers and other education advocates.

"The governor's formula is deeply divisive and fundamentally flawed," said David Sciarra, the lead attorney in the long-running Abbott vs. Burke state Supreme Court case.

Unfortunately, the conflict leaves New Jersey's 618 school districts in terrible disarray with vast shortfalls in the learning achievements of our children.

The quality of education will not be addressed, and neither will the inequity of funding schools with high property taxes, until politicians take real responsibility.

That is, unless the state Supreme Court imposes an Abbott vs. Burke style ruling that eliminates the current hodge podge of 618 districts and demands a single statewide system of free public schools, as the state constitution clearly requires.

The state constitution is really a remarkable document. It would do a lot of good if lawmakers and others responsible for implementing government policy took the time to read it.

Meanwhile, it's politics as usual in Trenton. Black lawmakers will get pushed to the back of the bus by white multimillionaires like Corzine, as taxpayers and children go on being cheated by incomeptence, corruption and greed.

Dead kids don't vote

Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said the shooting that left 13-year-old Elijah Henderson dead on the sidewalk on the gritty 200 block of Fulton Street reminded him "of the crack wars of the ’80s.”

“It’s the same issue now,” Bollwage said. "The media loves to couch it in terms of gangs, but it’s nothing more than a drug war.”

Bollwage criticized the anti-gang plan recently announced by Gov. Jon S. Corzine, saying “It’s all rhetoric,” without proposing any solutions of his own.

Bollwage also had no praise for neighbors who routinely hold block-watch sessions to help the under-staffed police force in the area where the shooting occurred, as if trying to address the problem of violence is an act of futility among black and hispanic residents.

Bollwage said that about 20 new officers would join the city’s 360-member department next year before he seeks a fifth term in the June Democratic primary election. Asked what else the city could do, Mr. Bollwage said: “You grieve. That’s what you do.”

Bollwage and the city's Democratic power brokers have for years been at war with members of the school board, which is seeking to curb violence with innovative methods. Elizabeth Board of Education member Tony Monteiro says the district is providing school uniforms to all students, helping children identify as part of a community and providing an easier way to make sure people are in their proper places.

Monteiro is dismayed by Bollwage's approach to violence in the city, remembering a time when the mayor worked with him as a leader of the North Elizabeth Youth baseball League.

Bollwage long ago moved away from the North End neighborhood where he grew up, opting for a home in the exclusive Elmora Hills section one block away from the Union border.

Meanwhile, Bollwage denies that widespread drug activity. prosititution and gangs have emerged while conditions on the streets deteriorate with these very problems.

More concerned with turning land over to wealthy contributors and building malls and hotels near Newark Liberty International Airport, Bollwage seems out of touch with the needs of people trying to survive on the city's mean streets.

Elizabeth has the 10th-highest rate of violent crime among New Jersey’s 15 largest cities, but the police department is below full strength and no superior officers or detectives are black. Most city cops live in shore communities an hour away from the neighborhoods that are increasingly dominated by criminal gangs.

It's easy for those 'out of touch' political bosses such as Bollwage to ignore problems that led to the death of one child last week and say there's nothing to do except grieve. For parents and other residents who live among the chaos, finding a cure for urban violence is a much greater priority that cannot be addressed merely by throwing up one's hands.

Another Cryan Arrested Drunk

The politically-connected Cryan family lost another round in its long battle with substance abuse last week, when the brother of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan and owner of Cryan's Ale House in North Branch was arrested for drunken driving.
A son of former Essex County Sheriff John Cryan Sr. was charged with charged with drunken driving almost four years to the day after his guilt in a prior DWI case was confirmed by an Appellate Division tribunal.
Police stopped John Cryan Jr., 47, for a traffic violation on westbound Interstate 78.
According to authorities, the Pittstown resident failed to maintain his lane and showed signs of intoxication when police pulled him over.

Police reported that the suspect was released to the custody of a family member, who was not identified, but his vehicle was towed and impounded. It is not believed that the family member was the lawmaker, because the brothers are alleged to each have domestic violence restraining orders against each other.
Cryan was previously charged by the Bedminster Police Department with DWI on August 14, 2001 after he crashed his car into a tree at about 2:00 a.m.
Cryan argued that case all the way to the Appellate Division, which confirmed his guilt established in two lower court trials in a decision issued Oct. 27, 2003.

A cousin of the suspect and lawmaker, Morristown Councilman John Cryan, pleaded guilty to assaulting a bartender in January, 2006 and was sentenced to 20 hours community service, mandatory AA meetings, and a $725 fine.
Assemblyman Cryan's son, also named John Cryan, was jailed for a month this year after having failed drug tests that were part of a probation sentence imposed after he brutally beat a motorist with a baseball bat as two friends punched and kicked the victim.

The assemblyman, is an undersheriff in Union County, vehemently denies any addiction to alcohol or chemical substances, although a court ordered psychological report does refer to "his alcohol abuse."
"(Karen Golding) acknowledges that she endured, excused and minimized Mr. Cryan's inappropriate behavior by choosing to believe his alcohol abuse was responsible for his actions," wrote Margaret R. Curvin, LCSW, a court-appointed psychotherapist in a Dec. 8, 2006 letter to the probation department.
Curvin was named to evaluate Karen Golding, a former girlfriend of the lawmaker, who was arrested on stalking charges after she has tipped a newspaper reporter about financial discrepancies in a non-profit fund controlled by Joseph Cryan.

Sheriff Ralph Froehlich hired Joseph Cryan as second in command seven months after the politician lost his job as bartender in his father's Metuchen pub in 2002.
While serving as Essex County Sheriff in 1979, John Cryan, an Irish immigrant who owned several drinking establishments, was charged with various counts of official corruption but was freed on a technicality.
The elder Cryan, who died in 2005, was also a former Essex County Democratic Party chairman and a member of the state Assembly.
In addition to his multiple salaried government jobs, Assemblyman Joseph Cryan is the Democratic State Committee chairman and political boss in Union Township.

Stark Raving Mad

I would like to point out, for all those feeble minded politicians in Washington who are prancing and complaining about Congressman Pete Stark's remarks, that the courageous men and women of our armed forces are putting their lives on the line for our freedom to make statements that are not pleasant and welcome by everyone.

That's the right to free speech and it is important because if not for outrageous remarks, nobody would have rebelled against a king in 1775. You don't need to fight for the right to say, "Have a nice day," but sometimes you do with comments that end with the phrase, "and the horse you rode in on."


Hopefully you are sitting, because this is exactly what Congressman Stark said: "You don't have money to fund the war or children but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq, to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Now let's examine the statement.

"You don't have money to fund the war or children." With deficits in the range of $500 billion, the federal government is spending far more than it has. This would then be right on the mark.

Part two is: "you're going to spend it, to blow up innocent people" -- and again, that is correct. Many of the war casualties are not terrorists or even combatants. Two million people have been displaced and starvation is common in war zones.

I have said before that George Bush is a murderer and a thief and I stand by that so I am going to have to concede the congressman is 100 percent correct on this statement as well.

Part three: "if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq" is obviously related to the notion of children's health care. By his veto of the SCHIP legislation, President Bush is throwing sick American children out into the street. Clearly some of those kids may die from illness or injury because their families lack funds to pay for medical care.

I suppose there will still be plenty of young Americans to send off to war, even though there appears to be no end in sight to Bush's folly in the middle east. Not necessarily on the money, but fair enough in the poetic realm of legislative debate.

Part four: "to get their heads blown off..." Congressman Stark might be reminded that some of the dead and wounded soldiers lost legs, arms, parts of their torso and so on. It's not just heads that get blown off in war, but despite being imprecise this remains accurate as a descriptive phrase meaning 'to be killed.'

President Bush is not just a murderer of Arabs, but many American military personnel have lost their good reason.

Finally, "for the president's amusement." That's about as good a reason for this war in Iraq as I have heard so far. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since President Bush's father's administration ended the Reagan-era policy of supplying such devices to Saddam Hussein. They don't like to hear it, but it is the truth. Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda or 9-11 and efforts to connect them were lies propagated to get us into this war. I could make a long list, but there was no legitimate provocation for this war.

Until President Bush stops lying, I am going to have to give credence to suggestions that the war is for his amusement or for oil or for any number of things.

Anybody in the military should feel insulted that the war is for President Bush's amusement, but not merely because someone acknowledges this concept.

Nancy Pelosi said Congressman Stark's remark was inappropriate, but I have to disagree.

Inappropriate would be getting control of Congress with a mandate to end the war and stop George Bush's crimes, then immediately taking impeachment 'off the table' and continuing to fund more unwarranted death and destruction.

Pelosi, drunk with power, is concerned only about the 2008 presidential election and its impact on her continued (lack of) leadership. No matter who wins the election next year, I want to see action to end this conflict now.