The Republican wins in New Jersey and Virginia and the close race in New York City tells us... ...self-financers, people affiliated with Big Wall Street, the Old Money Crowd, the establishment, the party leadership... are being put on notice. Not a Democratic or Republican thing...but a gun, fired by the political regulars -- not the newer Obama turnout cohort but the regular off-year cohort -- at the heart of those who protect those in power, at bailouts, at spending.
Also: very easy alternate explanation: the economy sucks. States are really hurting. Governors are very unpopular. Their support is going to crater.
President Obama made an appearance at the cis-Hackensack outpost of Fairleigh Dickinson University1 to raise campaign funds for our governor, Jon Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs chief. I was going to post about this yesterday, noting that, if memory served, this was the first presidential visit to Hackensack since President Uribe of Colombia made a state visit here a couple of years ago. Then I wasted a half hour trying to find a good photo or article to link to about the Uribe visit, got frustrated, and gave up. Part of the problem with that search is that we've had a Colombian-American mayor here, so articles about him popped up. And we also have an annual Colombian Day celebration here, so that comes up too.
Fortunately, I missed the inevitable traffic snarls yesterday, but Cheryl wasn't as lucky; she got stock in gridlock on Hackensack Ave. on her way back from the Hackensack Financial District. She had to make an Italian illegal U-Turn (all the police were occupied with motorcade security, so she didn't get a ticket for this) and loop around Hackensack via the highways. In any event, thanks to the magic of YouTube, here is some Hackesack residents' brush with the motorcade of the Imperial Presidency2:
1This school was derided as "Fairly Ridiculous" when I was growing up. Most of its "Metropolitan" campus is on the trans-side of the Hackensack River, which divides the City of Hackensack from the Township of Teaneck.
2By way of contrast, I recall a photo of French President Sarkozy jogging in Central Park last month when he was in New York for the annual UN festivities. Exactly one security guard was visible in the photo.
A third area where (some) Republicans may be able to draw a favorable contrast with Democrats, if they are willing to do so, is by running against Wall Street, or more accurately, running against the incestuous relationship between some major Wall Street firms and Washington. I suspect New Jersey's GOP gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie will try a version of this while running against our incumbent governor, former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine.
Today I got an e-mail from the Christie campaign which included this video:
By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press Writer David Porter, Associated Press Writer – 2 mins ago
NEWARK, N.J. – An investigation into the sale of black-market kidneys and fake Gucci handbags evolved into a sweeping probe of political corruption in New Jersey, ensnaring more than 40 people Thursday, including three mayors, two state lawmakers and several rabbis.
Even for a state with a rich history of graft, the scale of wrongdoing alleged was breathtaking. An FBI official called corruption "a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."
Federal prosecutors said the investigation initially focused on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.
Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.
Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.
Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars, some of it from the sale of counterfeit goods and bankruptcy fraud, authorities said.
In rounding up the defendants, FBI and IRS agents raided a synagogue Thursday morning in Deal, a wealthy oceanfront city of Mediterranean-style mansions, with a large population of Syrian Jews.
A couple of thoughts on this:
Aside from these arrests being good news in the civic hygiene sense, this is obviously good news for Chris Christie's campaign to unseat Governor Jon Corzine, given that four of the five public officials arrested were Democrats, that one of Corzine's staff members is a suspect and was forced to resign, and that these arrests will remind voters of Christie's successful track record of prosecuting corruption as a U.S. Attorney in NJ. It will be interesting to see how many tens of millions of dollars the former Goldman Sachs chief Corzine will pour into his reelection campaign now.
The Syrian Jewish community mentioned in the AP article above was profiled a couple of years ago by Zev Chafets in a New York Times Magazine article, "The Sy Empire". That article focused mainly on this community's strict ban on intermarriage. It mentioned that fraudster Eddie Antar ("Crazy Eddie") was a member of the community, and that the community was affluent from its business dealings, but it didn't mention anything about the kidney business. Those of you of a certain age from the New York area will remember the original Crazy Eddie's commercials, but here's a clip of one of them from YouTube for the rest of you. The fellow who posted this video on YouTube noted that the man in the commercial isn't Crazy Eddie himself, but an actor named Jerry Carroll.
Simple: don't hold them at the same time as other elections. New Jersey will have its primary elections in June, including a Republican primary to nominate either former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie or former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan to challenge former Goldman Sachs chief and current Governor Jon Corzine for the governorship. Scheduling local school board elections for the same day would have increased turnout. Instead, they were held earlier this month here in Hackensack. According to the Hackensack Chronicle's unofficial results, the city's $85,207,090 school budget was approved by a 880-515 vote: in a city of about 50,000 residents, an $85 million tax and spending decision was made by a ~3% minority of zealous voters. I'm sure that's just the way the city's education establishment prefers it.
Apparently, record-high energy prices haven't had the same effect on Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg as last week's Pew Poll noted they have had on a somewhat more representative sample of Americans. NJ Governor Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs chief, and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, one of the founders of ADP, got together with a couple of their less-affluent political colleagues in the Jersey Shore town of Belmar today to express their opposition to offshore drilling (The Record: "Corzine, others vow to fight offshore drilling").
On The Record's website, a lone commenter, "RamapoGuy" dissents from the Plutocrats' opinion on offshore drilling. After first noting that offshore rigs in the Gulf didn't spill oil even during Hurricane Katrina, he writes,
Alaskans get oil revenue checks each year..why can't we? We listened to the wackos in the 80's who said Nuclear energy would kill us all and now we are looking into Nuclear once more. If we would have ignored them back then, we would be in a better position today. We need to look at the current drilling technologies and start drilling something. We will always need oil so even if the oil is 10 years away, if we start exploring now, we will have it in 10 years. If we do nothing, we will have it never! Start drilling for oil and send a message to OPEC that we are starting to look elsewhere for oil.
Whom do you imagine has a better chance of getting his way on this, RamapoGuy or Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg? This is another reason to be confident in the secular bull market trend in oil continuing for another five years.
Just a man with a man's courage.
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Please note also that none of what I write here should be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence and use your own common sense before making any investment decisions.
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