New Jersey: Primed for the 2018 Midterms

The scene outside my NJ voting site on Tuesday

It felt good taking a positive step towards the November midterm elections at my local polling location in the 4th Congressional District of New Jersey on Tuesday morning.

Aside from the fact that it was gorgeous outside (always a plus on election day), overall the primary results looked pretty good for Democrats here in the Garden State.

2nd-term NJ Democratic Senator Bob Menendez got a wakeup call in the form of challenger Lisa McCormick.

Despite being a virtual unknown candidate who spent almost nothing on ads, and ran a below-the-radar shoestring campaign, the life-long Jersey resident still managed to grab an eye-opening 38% of the Democratic Senate primary vote - grabbing the attention of the ethically-bruised Menendez.

McCormick might not have name recognition, but if you take a quick look at a summary of her political views and policy positions posted on her Website, she aligns with the kind of progressive platform that skews more towards Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren ("eliminate the corrupt influence of dirty money in politics") and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ("paid family leave, universal health insurance, free tuition at public colleges and universities.")

My sense is that her receiving such a large chunk of the primary vote is more reflective of the fact that the progressive political block that was largely sparked by the energy and momentum of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, is not only highly motivated, it's expanding in races across the nation.

On Wednesday morning, New York Times political reporter Kate Zernike and LA Times columnist and author Patt Morrison joined the first segment on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC to discuss the results of the various primaries that were held in eight states around the country on Tuesday.

Trump ogles Bob Hugin at a White House meeting
of pharmaceutical executives

The consensus on the show seemed to be that Menendez only got 62% of the Democratic primary vote because many NJ voters were turned off by the political corruption charges he was on trial for last year.

(We'll circle back to that in a minute...)

But a caller from north Jersey offered an interesting observation on why McCormick scored 38% of the vote.

Bob Hugin is a die-hard Republican Trump supporter and pharmaceutical company exec.

He's become known for raising prices on a cancer drug by 20% and stashing profits overseas, not surprisingly, he's been tapped as the Republican candidate who will try and unseat Menendez for the NJ Senate seat in November.

The caller noted that Hugin (and the national GOP) have been running a steady stream of nasty attack ads on television and radio against Menendez.

Menendez, who served as the Mayor of Union City, NJ before serving in the state legislature and state senate before being elected to six terms in Congress, is a powerful political fixture in NJ politics and the dominant political player in Hudson County.

With Trump extremely unpopular here in NJ, and Hugin hanging his political hat on the whole "Make America Great Again" thing, his only option really is to attack Menendez relentlessly.

And as the aforementioned Brian Lehrer Show caller on Wednesday morning noted, Lisa McCormick benefited from Hugin's anti-Menendez ads by simply being an option on the primary ballot for voters to chose someone other than Menendez.

 (And without spending a dime of her own money on pricey television commercials I might add.)

But politics in the Garden State not a debutante ball (Chris Christie was governor here for Pete's sake...), and my sense is that most Jersey voters are politically savvy enough to know that the federal corruption charges filed against Menendez back in 2015 could arguably be considered borderline "garden variety" abuses of political power from the standpoint of Washington, D.C.

NJ Sen. Bob Menendez votes in Tuesday's primary
election at a polling site in Harrison, NJ 

Let's review: Menendez faced federal scrutiny over a $60,000 campaign donation received from his long-time personal friend Saloman Melgen.

A Florida ophthalmologist and businessman whose company stood to benefit after Menendez used his position as the (then) Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask State Department officials to try and pressure Dominican Republic officials to approve a port-security deal that would have financially benefitted Melgen.

Over the course of his lengthy political career, Menendez also accepted a variety of other campaign contributions and personal gifts (totaling about $750,000) from Melgen; including airplane trips on Melgen's private plane and hotel rooms, some of which Menendez didn't declare as required by law.

Did it raise ethical questions? Sure it did, but like it or not, and many people don't, the reality is that kind of thing is standard practice on Capitol Hill amongst many (not all) lawmakers.

And if Congress wants to change the laws and penalties for those sketchy kinds of political shenanigans (which millions of Americans think they should) then they should roll up their sleeves and do so - and if they don't, then American voters need to show up at the polls and vote people into office who will.

But it's not fair to use situational ethics to pick and choose who gets criminally charged for it, especially a Cuban-American Senator like Menendez who's one of four Hispanic politicians currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

Frankly it reeks of ethnic bias, and that's just one of the reasons his trial ended in November of 2017 with a hung jury, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial - and the Justice Department dropped all charges against him in January of this year, though he was "admonished" by the Senate.   

If you take issue with the suggestion that Menendez being Hispanic was a factor in the charges being filed against him, remember, back in December of 2015, as Menendez was being charged, Republican (white) Tennessee Senator Bob Corker was found to have failed to properly report millions of dollars in personal income he'd received (while serving in the Senate) from commercial real estate properties, three hedge funds and various other investment vehicles.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker

And don't forget the infamous "Corker Kickback" last December as Republicans tossed out the rule book, ethics and their Obama-era hysteria about the federal deficit in a frantic effort to pass a massive 500-page tax bill at the last minute so they could go home for Christmas with a "victory" and Donald Trump could preen for his wealthy political donor base.

That epic legislative con-job was drafted in secret, there were no public hearings, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) didn't even get a chance to analyze and score it to see how it would actually impact the U.S. economy.

And it was famously released in the middle of the night - literally hours before a scheduled floor vote with hand-written notes scribbled in the margins (drain that swamp, right?)

If you recall, in the face of an irate public and the Senate wavering, Bob Corker famously announced that he would not support the GOP tax bill; potentially dooming its passage in the Senate.

But on Friday December 15th, Corker (the 4th wealthiest U.S. Senator) miraculously changed his vote after a provision was literally inserted into the tax bill at the last minute.

"The Corker Kickback" as it quickly became known, would allow people who keep vast amounts of real estate holdings in s-corporations (like Corker, Trump and First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner), to save millions in taxes on the "pass through" income they receive from profits and revenue derived from their massive real estate portfolios.   

That's just one example of how it works on Capitol Hill, Corker was never charged for failing to report millions in income from investments he bolstered (in part) by the legislation that he helped to pass - and he was actually rewarded for flipping his vote on the tax bill.

So as far as I'm concerned, Bob Menendez being charged for accepting a $60,000 campaign donation and $750,000 in other donations and gifts over the years from a lifelong friend is like issuing speeding ticket to a driver doing 70 mph during the Daytona 500.

Especially when you consider that the Koch brothers spent almost $900 million of their personal fortune on the 2016 elections, much of it poured into Republican political operations and conservative PACs in the form of untraceable "Dark Money". 

NJ Democratic candidate (NJ 11th) Mikie Sherrill

The Kochs very well could've spent more. 

Here in the NJ-4th Congressional District where I live, 38-year-old Trenton-born U.S. Navy veteran Josh Welle (a self-described centrist Democrat) beat the more progressive Jim Keady for the right to try and unseat the longtime Republican incumbent Chris Smith.

Tuesday was a good day for Democratic Navy veterans in Jersey.

In a widely-watched race in the NJ 11th Congressional District up in north Jersey, former Navy helicopter pilot and one-time federal prosecutor Mikie Sherrill won the Democratic nomination to vie for the seat being vacated by long-time Republican Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen; one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress (and one of the wealthiest too.)

You may remember him as the guy who sparked a steady progressive uprising of sorts by a grass roots organization called NJ 11th For Change in the reliably conservative 11th District by refusing to hold town hall meetings to avoid confronting voters angry with Donald Trump's policies and behavior.

Freylinghuysen supported Trump, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has opposed gun control and same sex marriage during his tenure in Washington.

Members of NJ 11th For Change protesting outside

He hasn't held a town hall meeting since 2013 and NJ 11th For Change members began organizing events to protest his refusal to address his own constituents - including delivering petitions to his congressional office. 

They made national headlines by staging events where some held "Where's Rodney?" sign.

They even held town halls with an empty chair representing Freylinghuysen.


In 2017, as Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare following Trump's inauguration, hundreds of members of NJ 11th For Change began showing up at Freylinghuyen's office each Friday with baked goods to express their anger at his support to snatch healthcare from millions of people.

In response, he famously sent a letter to the board of the local Lakeland Bank complaining about the group's "liberal" tactics and he "outed" Saily Avelenda, a member of NJ 11th For Change who worked for the bank.

Forcing her to resign from her position as a senior vice president.

Freylinghuysen, facing heat over his actions, announced he would retire back in May, opening the door for Democrats to flip a congressional seat that's been Republican since 1980 after Republicans gerrymandered the 11th District by moving it's center from Essex County to Morris County.

A suburban district that's 87% white and one of the wealthiest districts on the nation by median income.

The rise of Fascism in America?

The same grassroots energy that saw millions of people marching in protest of Trump's inauguration in 2017 has only continued and intensified.

That energy is reflected in Tuesday's primary results which have set the stage for Democrats to flip the 24 seats they need to win back the House.

With Donald Trumps lawyers now floating Constitutionally-questionable theories that the president cannot legally obstruct justice, or that he could simply pardon himself in the event that he's found guilty of criminal activity, the disturbing breeze now blowing from the White House reeks of authoritarianism.

Rudy Giuliani telling the Huffington Post on Sunday "If (Trump) shot James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day." to suggest that the 45 is completely immune from being held legally responsible in a court of law for actions that violate the law, is genuinely disturbing.

As CNN political reporter Manu Raju noted on Twitter on Sunday:

"(Republican) Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley just told me this, 'If I were president of the United States, and I had a lawyer that said I could pardon myself, I think I would hire a new lawyer'."

At this point, as AboveTheLaw.com reported back in March, hiring an established top lawyer is no easy feat for Trump - many top legal guns have said they simply won't work for him, especially after he fired respected DC lawyer Ty Cobb.

Sad and pathetic as it may be, there's a reason the unhinged Giuliani is now Trump's most visible lawyer, and it's only served to fire up Democrats, independents, progressives and even some Republicans who've had enough of Donald Trump.

As Tuesday's primary results showed, New Jersey is primed for the 2018 midterm elections.

There's a long way to go to reach November, but the results in California, New Mexico, Iowa and New Jersey clearly demonstrate there's a path to get there.

One Knee Equals the 1st Amendment

Coach Orlando Gooden kneeling during the playing
of the national anthem with his 8-year-old players

The image (pictured left), somewhat blurry and taken from a distance with a cell phone camera, seemed innocent enough.

A football coach kneeling on a field with a group of young players - a slice of Americana that is the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings.

But in a reflection of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, these third graders were kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before their game last Sunday.

Under normal circumstances such a thing might have escaped the notice of the media spotlight.

But last week when the story broke, Donald Trump was enmeshed in yet another disastrous week defined by the chaos sewn by his own fragile ego, narcissism, ignorance of world affairs, lack of political experience and unprincipled reactionary bluster.

His belligerent and often incoherent 42-minute speech in front world leaders gathered at the United Nations last Tuesday marked a new low-point for American diplomacy and global leadership.

He drew audible gasps from gathered attendees when he threatened to "totally destroy North Korea", and in defiance of the advice of his own senior advisers, derisively referred to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as "rocket man" before awkwardly trying to define his isolationist "America First" foreign policy by rambling on about individual nation's right to "sovereignty"  - even as he belittled other nations for their choice to pursue nuclear weapons programs or a socialist form of government.

In the aftermath, various outraged diplomats from other nations dismissed Trump as "unhinged", a "dotard" (senile person) and a "Goliath" among other choice names - so clearly the criticism was making The Donald feel defensive.

Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner

A defensiveness compounded by news reports last week that special counsel Bob Mueller is not only investigating Trump wanna-be consigliere Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Russia, the controversial son-in-law's role in putting together the murky campaign internet operation that targeted Trump supporters (and may have provided data to Russian agencies) is also a target of the probe.


Instead of trying to clarify, moderate or walk back his comments at the UN, Trump, evidently electrified by the media attention, decided to dial it up even further by doing what he always seems to do - he tried to change the media narrative.

When things aren't quite going Trump's way (as they usually aren't), his default MO is to launch a Twitter attack on something, or someone that his shrinking base of conservative supporters can obsess over and rally around.

Like the way he keeps ranting about Hillary's emails ten months after the election despite newly released documents provided to Newsweek via a Freedom of Information Act request showing that at least six top current and former Trump advisers (including Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus and Jared Kushner) all used personal email accounts to conduct official White House business.

Last week Trump's juvenile pissing contest with Kim Jong-un only seemed to earn him more criticism from mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike and increase the risk of a military confrontation - so he turned his focus to the NFL.

Now it's common knowledge that Trump watches a lot of TV, and despite his office granting him access to classified information from the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Pentagon and other government sources, remarkably he still relies on the conservative bias filtered through Fox News as his primary source of information on the world.

So there's little question that he was watching Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning the day after his unhinged UN speech last week when the target of their Fox-ian outrage was a group of African-American 3rd graders and their football coach.

Members of the Cahokia Quarterback Club in 2016

Many Americans were absorbing the news that after eight months, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had finally released detailed information on 3,000 online ads paid for by a Russian agency that skewered Hillary Clinton, promoted bogus fake news stories about her and were decidedly pro-Trump.

But where were the chirpy hosts of Fox & Friends directing their focus?


On a group of young American kids expressing their 1st Amendment rights on one of the most important human rights and justice issues in modern American history.

Now if you take a few minutes to listen to the tone of the indignant moral outrage of Fox News "contributor" Rachel Campos-Duffy, one might think that the small group of 3rd graders had burned an American flag and then pissed on it.

But the members of Cahokia Quarterback Club (8-years old and younger) from Cahokia, Illinois began their own little protest after asking their head coach Orlando Gooden, a former college football player at the University of Missouri who graduated from Cahokia High School, questions about the widespread protests in St. Louis after Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson found former St. Louis PD officer Jason Stockley not guilty for the 2011 shooting death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith.

The kids were aware of who Stockley was, which in itself is a sad statement of America in the 21st century.

As Gooden told St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI, (watch the automatic video volume if you click that link, it's loud) he asked the kids if they understood what the protests were about and one of them answered, "Because black people are being killed and nobody's going to jail."

Coach Orlando Gooden and Latia Cole-Gooden 

The coach decided to speak with them about other high profile killings of African-Americans at the hands of police that have taken place across the country, and why former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games last year as a form of silent, non-violent protest.

The kids asked if they could do it as well, and with the unanimous support of the kid's parents, Gooden told them could kneel during the national anthem at Little Devil's Field in Belleville.

When news of their actions went viral, that's when Fox & Friends seized on it as an example of the pending collapse of society - and brought Rachel Campos-Duffy on to vent her outrage.

I found it interesting how quick Fox News was to sort of hold her up as the "outraged conservative mother", defending American values and her children by vilifying a group of 8-year-old kids trying to understand why members of law enforcement are never held legally responsible for shooting and killing African-American boys and men.

As if she was somehow victimized by a group of 8-year-old boys kneeling on a grass football field while the national anthem played.

During her appearance on Fox & Friends she called their peaceful non-violent protest "shameless."

The Arizona-born Campos-Duffy first gained notoriety as a member of MTV's The Real World, where her outspoken conservative views and advocacy of the Republican Party at times caused friction with other housemates on the show.

These days she's a busy WASPish Latina mother who works as the national spokesperson for the Koch brothers-funded LIBRE Initiative, an organization which seeks to promote "free market policies within the Latino community" (whatever THAT means).

And she's married to her former Real World cast-mate Sean Duffy.

Rachel Campos-Duffy and her loopy Republican
Congressman husband Sean Duffy 

A budding right-wing nut-job Republican Congressman who represents Wisconsin's 7th District and by all accounts his doing his fellow Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan proud.

As Jonathan Allen reported in Roll Call back in February, Duffy drew criticism after a CNN interview in which he "applauded 'the good things that came from' a white supremacist murdering nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, SC in 2015." 


He also voted for a bill that would allow college ROTC programs to fly the Confederate flag and tried to blame liberals for the fact that Jared Loughner, a right-wing wack job prone to conservative anti-government hysteria and kooky right-wing conspiracy theories, shot Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in the head.

During a town hall meeting in 2011 after Republican Tea Party poster boy Scott Walker was swept into office on a wave of anti-Obama hatred and proceeded to propose draconian cuts to the Wisconsin state budget, when a construction worker complained that his wife's salary would be slashed, Duffy complained about he and his wife and six kids having to survive on his Congressional salary of $174,000 a year.

So it's no accident that Rachel Campos-Duffy would be called on to offer social commentary on the 8-year-old members of the Cahokia Quarterback Club deciding to kneel during the national anthem.

Fox-Ready: Links to the Koch brothers? Check!

It's ironic that she gained her fame on a TV reality show called "The Real World", like her husband she's totally detached from the harsh realities faced by average Americans, and thrives off the energy of viewing everything through a distorted lens of "conservative values".

Campos-Duffy is tailor made for Fox because she's used to living in a distorted bubble - the same kind of parallel reality that Fox News pumps into Donald Trump's head every day.

In a recent issue of The Hollywood Reporter, writer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar offered an interesting take on the distorted reality that Fox News propagates by immersing himself in watching it for three days straight as an experiment - he wrote:

"Fox gives Trump misinformation that makes him think his world is real: that he won the popular vote, that people don't think he's a racist, misogynist xenophobe. It's been reported that twice a day Trump is given a folder of only good news about himself, which some in the White House refer to as 'the propaganda document'. When those folders aren't enough, he can tune in to Fox."

As the unified rejection of Trump's recent criticism of the NFL and its players showed over the weekend, he's as out of touch as Fox News on the issue of men and boys making the decision to kneel as a form of silent, peaceful protest against injustice in America.

Leave it to Fox to call 8-year-olds "shameless" for exercising their 1st Amendment rights and Trump calling hundreds of NFL players "sons of bitches" for doing the same thing.

As many observers have noted, the simply doesn't grasp the basic fundamentals of the democracy he lives in - unfortunately that's not covered in his daily 'propaganda document'.

The Johnstown Flood & 'Company Town': Economic Inequality & The Environment

Miami skyline darkens as Hurricane Irma approaches

Late last night I spoke with my good friend Jimmy who lives down in Florida within earshot of Orlando.

He's a first generation Irish-American who grew up in the Bronx, and he and I used to bartend together at an Irish bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan called McAleer's.

We speak fairly regularly, but after watching CNN coverage of Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida last night, I decided to check in.

"Listen Mickey, I'm stayin' put." he defiantly declared in his New York accent tinged with a hint of an Irish brogue.

Jimmy, a genuinely eclectic character, rarely calls friends by their first names, anyone he's close with gets assigned a nickname; mine is "Mickey". Don't ask me why, I've never asked.

He now lives about 90 miles south of Gainsville about a 45-minute drive to the Orlando airport, so he's at least an hour from the east coast of Florida.

When Irma began tracking towards the west coast of Florida headed towards Tampa, Jimmy decided he was just going to ride it out at home rather than pack his car up and head north as millions of other Florida residents (including Rush Limbaugh) have done.

He told me he has plenty of food, water, vodka and tequila, plus he lives in a relatively newly constructed townhouse complex; so he's taking his chances.

Jimmy is fortunate enough that he could have afforded to evacuate if he'd chosen to, but as a number of news reports this week have detailed, like many poor residents of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, there are millions of people in Florida who simply couldn't afford to evacuate.

Something that presents a troubling problem for the future, especially given that warming ocean temperatures and the failure of advanced, industrialized nations to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year are going to lead to even more coastal flooding and longer hurricane seasons.

A house impaled by a tree after the Johnstown Flood

The prospect that people with less access to resources, transportation, credit and savings are not going to have the option to evacuate areas prone to flood or storm damage exacerbated by fossil fuel and petrochemical companies drive for profit, is truly disturbing.

That said I want to take a look at two different American communities, Johnstown, PA and Crossett, AK.

Earlier this morning I was reading a really interesting article on the devastating Johnstown Flood by Peter Smith published in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette back in 2014.

Those unfamiliar with this horrific disaster might understandably make the mistake of thinking of it as a "natural disaster".

But as Smith points out in his article, the event sheds light on how economic inequality can have a direct impact on the severity of weather-related disasters.

On May 31, 1889 a reservoir known as South Fork Lake (or Lake Conemaugh) holding almost 15 million cubic meters of water crashed through a poorly-constructed and criminally-neglected earthen dam in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

The lake was the centerpiece of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, a private retreat for the wealthy residents of Pittsburgh, many of whom (including Carnegies and Fricks) had made their fortunes in steel manufacturing, railroads, coal mining and banking.

As Peter Smith notes, the 1% of Pittsburgh used the exclusive club as a getaway from the noise, heat and pollution (a by-product of their fortunes) of the city, and in an effort to make the lake more conducive to pleasure-seeking activities, they made changes to the dam that held the 16 million gallons of water at bay.

For example, in order to improve the fishing, the owners of the club had screens installed over the entrances of the spillways that allowed water to naturally flow from the dam.

Screens which eventually became clogged with debris causing water pressure to build.

To make it easier to construct a pathway for horse-drawn carriages to pass over the dam, the club had the top of the dam reduced in height and widened to make it more even with roads on the side of the dam as seen in the illustration to the left.  

As detailed in an article about the Johnstown Flood on Wikipedia, when the owners purchased the lake from the Pennsylvania Railroad, they also failed to replace a system of discharge pipes and valves that were originally part of the dam that allowed water pressure to be relieved when needed - pipes and valves that some enterprising moron later removed and sold off for scrap money.

After 24 hours of nonstop rain, around 3pm on May 31,1889 the dam on South Fork Lake finally gave way, sending 16 million gallons of water cascading 14 miles down the Little Conemaugh River as it gathered momentum and collected tons of trees, rocks, houses, railroad cars, rail lines, telegraph poles, farm animals, fences, miles of barbwire, wagons and other debris.

This deadly nightmarish mass, traveling at 40-miles per hour and at least 60 feet high, leveled several small towns before slamming into the town of Johnstown 57 minutes after the dam broke.

The resulting devastation killed 2,208 people (including 396 children), unknown numbers of animals, and leveled the town of Johnstown - 777 victims were never identified - and some trapped people and animals died when a fire later broke out in the debris.

Part of the tons of debris clogging the Little Conemaugh
River after the Johnstown Flood

The event shocked the nation and the world, 18 nations including Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Australia and Turkey sent aid.

It was the first large-scale relief effort by the Red Cross, whose founder, Clara Barton stayed there for 5 months along with the thousands of people who came from across the nation to assist.

The failure of the dam was a direct result of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club's alterations to the dam and failure to maintain it.


But sadly, in a reflection of the economic inequality which is so prevalent today, even though the actions of the club caused the devastation, two high-priced lawyers (who were also members of the club) successfully blocked efforts to hold the club liable - and a court reached the conclusion that the dam break was an act of God.

None of the victims were able to sue the members for damages, and though club members did donate thousands of dollars to the relief effort, they were never held legally responsible - and they'd made sure to keep their personal assets safely walled off from any liabilities the club might face.

The aftermath of the Johnstown Flood sparked a change in liability laws around the country and brought increased attention on the economic disparity of the Victorian age - not just here in America but around the world as well.

But unfortunately the deeper economic inequity at the root of the disaster is still impacting the lives of poor and working class people.

On Friday's edition of the Leonard Lopate Show, Natlie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian, who wrote, produced and directed the new documentary Company Town, were interviewed about their work to bring attention to the town of Crossett, Arkansas.

Activist Pastor David Bouie in front of his home
in Crossett, Arkansas

The focus of their film is the impact that a paper plant operated by Georgia-Pacific is having on the residents of the town - many of whom make their living by working at the plant.

Georgia-Pacific is owned by Charles and David Koch, whose company Koch Industries is on record as one of the most prolific polluters in modern American history.

The Koch brothers are ardent libertarians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to back conservative political candidates.

But not just any political candidate, those who will aggressively attack state and federal environmental laws as infringements on personal freedom to make it easier for Koch Industries to make more profit from the web of oil, natural gas, pipeline and other energy-related companies they own.

The Koch brothers didn't build the paper plant in Crossett - but they own it  now.

One of the subjects of Company Town is Pastor David Bouie, a long-time environmental activist, he worked in the plant for 10 years and he's pictured above standing in front of his home on Penn Road in Crossett - of the 15 homes in the area, 11 have had someone die of cancer and in the film he walks the block identifying each one by name.

Another subject in the film, Hazel Parker, also worked in the plant - her mother, father and sister all died of cancer.

9-year-old Simone Smith is interviewed in the film as well, she was diagnosed with cancer and her ovary had to be surgically removed after a mass was discovered in her stomach.

The documentary cites not only the pollution from the Georgia-Pacific plant that's clogged a nearby river as well as the soil and air, but the alarmingly high cancer rates suffered by residents of the town whose livelihoods depend on the plant.

Georgia-Pacific plant in Crossett

The plant dumps 45 million gallons of waste water every day into the Ouachita River - waste which includes a number of harmful chemicals including hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde.

The film is in a limited release in New York, but I'm hoping it's going to be made available on Netflix so it can reach a wider audience - someone needs to stick EPA head Scott Pruitt in a room and watch this film, but he's probably already been in a room with lobbyists from Georgia-Pacific or Koch Industries.

Ben Kenigsberg wrote a review of Company Town in the New York Times last Thursday, and while the pollution in Crossett has been the subject of media coverage in the past, hopefully the release of the documentary will generate more public attention and political pressure on Koch Industries to do something about the pollution that's causing cancer .

Not in a nightmarish flood like in Johnstown back in 1889, but slowly and steadily as Koch Industries continues to make profit while average Americans of modest means suffer from the same plant that keeps food on their tables and a steady paycheck coming.

If there's a more egregious example of the devastating effects of economic inequity, environmental racism, political apathy, loss of innocent life and the spoiling of natural resources in the name of profit, I'm not sure what it is.

Anyway I'll check in with my friend Jimmy shortly to make sure he's okay as Hurricane Irma approaches, he's lucky enough to be able to leave in the event of a disaster, whether it be man-made or natural.

Most of the people of Crossett, Arkansas and Johnstown, Pennsylvania back in 1889 weren't, and are not, nearly so fortunate.

The Zombie Meets Political Reality

'Zombies, Vampires and Republicans' is not the name of a low-budget summer horror movie.

Though I freely confess that I would pay to go see that based on the title alone.

Actually that was the title of the esteemed Princeton University economist Paul Krugman's op-ed in the New York Times last Monday.

One that was both timely and insightful given the current political climate.

It offered his usual mix of progressive-tinged wit, wonky economic insight for the common man, and sharp political insight; it was published on June 19th, the eve of one of the most anticipated special Congressional election in modern history (we'll come back to that in a minute).

Krugman's op-ed also offers insight into today's decision by Senate Majority Leader McConnell to delay a vote on the Republican healthcare bill after at least six Republicans came out against it in the wake of yesterday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of this draconian piece of legislation showed that it would strip well over 22 million Americans of their healthcare by 2020, drastically increase healthcare premiums and gut Medicaid like a fish.

When Krugman uses the term 'Zombie', he's not talking about the fictional flesh-eating humanoids popularized in films like Night of the Living Dead or TV shows like AMC's The Walking Dead.

Krugman uses the word zombie to describe the derisive inside-the-Beltway term for "policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along."

The Senate's version of the healthcare bill, which was famously negotiated in total secrecy away from the sunlight of public scrutiny (by actual vampires apparently), is a prime example of a zombie.

Home for the holidays: Sen. Mitch McConnell

It's not a healthcare bill at all.

It's a massive tax cut for the wealthiest 1% that redistributes hundreds of billions of dollars from bedrock social safety net programs like Medicaid in order to lavish people who are already loaded with more cash.

Republicans figured they could slip it past the white working class base that elected Trump.


They figured that the Obama-fear-hatred the GOP base cling to like well-worn blankies would serve as sort of a political smokescreen and distract decent working class folk while they slapped a 'Repeal Obamacare!' sign on a tax break for the wealthy.

But unfortunately for Republican politicians and Trump, Obama isn't the president anymore.

Now that the levers of power in Washington in the House, Senate and White House are all controlled by Republicans, all the irrational disinformation about the Affordable Care Act and election campaign hysteria generated around conservative rallying cries to repeal Obamacare just don't have as much political oomph as they used to.

Now that millions of veterans, working and middle class people over 50 and people who work jobs that don't offer healthcare, people who used to fall through the cracks of the healthcare net in America, realize that the Affordable Care Act guarantees them access to healthcare - a majority of people don't want it repealed.  

The Republican healthcare zombie ran smack into the harsh political reality that the GOP just doesn't persuade the mainstream on issues anymore, because their policies don't actually do anything for them (the working class white base) which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering is how the GOP stays in power these days.

With a little help from the Russians of course.

All roads lead to Rome for Republicans, and Rome means tax cuts for the rich, the Senate bill was exposed for that even though they tried to craft it in secret.

Capitol Police escort a disabled protester from
Sen. McConnell's office last week

What's interesting to me is that McConnell could only lose two votes from his own party to get his zombie passed and six Republican Senators came out against it - rumors are that even more opposed it but stayed silent.

One would have thought McConnell would have gotten the message last week when cringe-worthy
video of Capitol Police hauling away disabled people in wheelchairs who showed up at McConnell's Senate office to protest the bill went viral.

But no, he was unmoved by such emotional displays by people who will be decimated by draconian cuts to Medicaid.

McConnell thought he could get the votes to ram it past in time for Senators to go home for their hardly-deserved July 4th break.

But the CBO score revealed the truth, and all the Obama-bashing in the world isn't enough to hide the fact that 22 million people are going to lose their access to healthcare.

The zombie met political reality today and McConnell was forced to delay the vote while Senators go back to meet to see what kind of compromises they can make to get the votes needed to pass it.

But Republican Senators from states like Kansas, Maine, Ohio and West Virginia realize that the 2018 midterm elections are on the horizon - they know what slashing Medicaid will do to their older constituents and to their chances for re-election.

To the casual political observer glancing at the calendar, the 2018 midterm elections might seem a long ways off - but they're really not.

The special election last Tuesday for Georgia's hotly contested 6th Congressional District between Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel made that quite clear.

House candidate Jon Ossoff (D-GA) waves during
his concession speech last week

The tens of millions of dollars, intense national focus and social media reach that both the Democratic and Republican parties poured into this race made it the most expensive in American history.

While there have been four different special Congressional elections already (all won by Republicans), the race in the Georgia 6th is widely seen as the first real opening salvo in the upcoming national political war for Congress.

An astounding $59 million was collectively spent on this race by both political parties.


And the campaign contributions speak to the candidates themselves.

The bulk of Karen Handel's donations came from large Republican Political Action Committees (PAC's) largely funded by the big conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers, the reclusive Trump-backing hedge fund gazillionaire Robert Mercer, or the shadowy casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, these 1%'ers can now legally pour virtually limitless amounts of anonymous cash into elections, like a gushing fire hose shoved through the broken window of a house.

That unprecedented flood of cash, combined with the despicable kinds of Republican voter suppression tactics that Karen Handel herself specialized in when she served as Georgia's secretary of state from 2007 - 2010 (read Ari Berman's June 19th article on Handel in The Nation), helped Republicans keep this seat Red.

But the Georgia 6th has been Republican since before Ossoff, a former Congressional staffer and documentary film maker, was even born, the district of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a place where Democrats used to lose by a margin of 20 points.

Karen Handel is sworn into office: a reward for her
years of Republican voter-suppression tactics in GA

With the help of over $24 million raised from 200,000 different small campaign contributions from individual donors all over the country (like me) and an additional $8 million from the Democratic Party, Ossoff did something very few in the DNC expected him to do - he made the race competitive.

He forced Republicans who thought this would be an easy victory, to funnel tens of millions from their Big Donor war chest into this one race.



Ossoff didn't just compete, he almost won.

And it wasn't some 20-point political blowout, when the votes of all 259,488 people who cast ballots were finally tallied up in the early morning hours of last Wednesday, Ossoff garnered 48.1% of the vote to Handel's 51.9%.

He lost by just 9,702 votes by rallying the local Democratic base and doing what the Democratic Party used to be known for - Standing up for the little guy.

He made issues like the economy, defending Medicare and Medicaid, protecting civil liberties, and defending women's health issues and supporting Planned Parenthood and  fighting voter suppression cornerstones of his campaign - so he may not have won the seat.

But he set the stage for the 2018 midterm elections by showing that standing firm on a solid progressive platform can rally the Democratic base - and even persuade some disenchanted Republicans to switch sides as well.

Will that be enough to overcome nationwide Republican voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering of political districts to dilute Democratic and progressive voting blocs?

Organizations like Flippable, a group comprised of former Hillary Clinton staffers determined to use complex political analysis to challenge Republicans at the state level with small targeted donations, think so.

Ossoff winning 48.1% of the Georgia 6th District and a majority of Americans rejecting the Republican healthcare bill is enough to hang the hat of hope on - and maybe enough to stop the zombie in it's tracks in 2018.

The Republican Fear Factor

As an African-American man who stands 6 foot 7 inches tall, it's pretty fair to say that I tend to stand out whenever I'm out in public; for reasons related to both my physicality and my ethnicity.

In order to maintain my sense of sanity and perspective, I've learned to simply accept that lingering stares and sidelong glances from complete strangers are a part of my everyday reality; one that I can't take personally or react emotionally to - it just" is" and I have to tune out what people who don't know me may, or may not project onto me.

But lately when I walk around in the grocery store or pharmacy, I've found myself looking back at the man or woman whose glance lingers on me longer than usual, and in my mind I catch myself thinking, "Did they vote for Trump?"

The moment that thought pops into my head I have to stop and remind myself that is ME projecting my own insecurities and fears onto someone else - and there's way too much of that happening in this country these days.

So much has changed in the 38 days since the November 8th elections shook the foundations of America's Democracy, but the abiding sense of fear that was such a strong undercurrent of the 2016 presidential campaign season seems just as acute; if not more so.

Just this afternoon a Washington Post article by Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reports that both FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James Clapper are now in agreement with the CIA's assessment that Russia intentionally interfered with the 2016 presidential elections.

Something that only adds to widespread fears that the election of Donald Trump was a result of a combination of voter fraud, fake news stories and interference by the Russian government.

     

Psychiatrists and other mental healthcare professionals have been treating patients for anxieties related to the president-elect's statements and actions since as far back as May of this year.

EPA-nominee Scott Pruitt

His continuing stream of unhinged Twitter messages and appointment of key advisors who either harbor extremist right-wing views or have little actual policy experience has done little to assuage the concerns of the millions of people who voted for Clinton.

The selection of cabinet heads who actually oppose the mission of the federal agencies they're slated to lead have only exacerbated the fears of what a Trump presidency will mean to laws and regulations in this country. 

Case in point, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a environmental regulations-hating climate change denier who has spent much of his tenure filing lawsuits against the federal government on behalf of the oil and natural gas industry that he shills for - the idea that a guy like that is going to head up the Environmental Protection Agency is, well, scary.  

Republicans have been peddling in fear since the 1960's when they began targeted efforts to lure white voters by exploiting anxieties about race and the changing face of America during the civil rights era and later when rioting broke out in large cities in the wake of the assassination of Dr. King.

But the conservative exploitation of their overwhelmingly white voter base's fears in the 21st century has taken on a new dimension since the election of President Obama in 2008, as University of Colorado psychology professor Tom Pyszczynski observed in Rolling Stone back in October:

"I suggest that one of things frightening them is the de-whitening of America. I don't think people are afraid of illegal immigrants committing crimes against them - but they're bothered by certain kinds of immigrants diluting the whiteness of the country and the American identity that people get their sense of security from. The idea of 'taking our country back' after having a black president is a prime example of that."  

   

That quote was lifted from 'The Age Of Fear', an insightful examination of how fear has impacted the 2016 elections in an October, 2016 Rolling Stone article by Neil Strauss. (Which is a must-read.)

Strauss spoke with sociologists, neurologists and psychologists to analyze how wealthy Republican rainmakers like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and others who use their fortunes to funnel vast untraceable sums to political action committees that in turn influence partisan Websites, media outlets and even "mainstream" platforms like Fox News to expose people to a constant stream of content designed to keep them filled with anxiety.

And as Strauss observed, anxiety-ridden people are not only extremely susceptible - they vote.

Trump's xenophobic and racially divisive rhetoric was the same kind of "southern strategy" that got Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan elected, it's also rooted in the same kind of anxiety that George H.W. Bush's campaign exploited with the infamous Willie Horton political ad to help him crush Democratic candidate Mike Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race.

I work with an Irish-American guy in his 50's who voted for Trump; we had a lot of conversations about politics during the run up to the November 8th elections.

He's an Army veteran, staunch Catholic and gun and NASCAR enthusiast who repeatedly complained about how dangerous Hillary Clinton's missing emails were to the country - and that "she couldn't be trusted." 

Dangerous classified emails?

There were some days when he'd be so worked up about it I got the feeling that he'd spent the previous evening in front of the television watching hours of Fox News.

Now this is a genuinely decent man who treats others fairly and with respect regardless of their race or ethnicity - he goes out of his way to make sure that Mexican immigrants who work for the company are treated fairly.

But in the same way that Neil Strauss observed that people who are anxiety-ridden tend to see their vote as an easy way to assuage their fears, my friend would often point out deficiencies in local or federal government that he'd blame on Obama - then relate them to Hillary's emails.

For example there have been some issues with post office deliveries in the past few months, he'd blame that on Obama and say things like, "See, Trump would fix that!" - never mind Trump's trail of bankruptcy filings of his own businesses, the scores of lawsuits filed against him and his companies by vendors or suppliers who never got paid for their work, or his scam "Trump University. "  

For many American conservatives President Obama and Hillary Clinton represent this amorphous all-encompassing scapegoat for a laundry list of conservative anxieties about race, politics, government, foreign affairs and the changing landscape of America.

Think these folks voted to have Social Security cut?

Never mind the fact that the economy is now stable, the nation is in one of the longest sustained periods of job growth, the unemployment rate is under 5% and the stock market is at an all-time high.

Many Republican voters have been manipulated into seeing only the skin color of the president; and magnified the perceived flaws of Clinton while ignoring those of Trump.


In focusing on race and an imagined fear of immigrants, far too many Republicans have been blinded from seeing the deeper Republican political strategy that includes gutting Social Security and Medicare - programs many of those same folks at Trump rallies will depend on if they don't already.

And even though I may disagree with them politically, those folks aren't stupid.

What do they think as Trump offers up a tax plan with the lion's share of tax cuts going to top earners that depends on billions in government spending cuts that he hasn't spelled out yet?

As Trump assembles a presidential cabinet that includes billionaires, Wall Street insiders, CEO's who oppose minimum wage laws, and the current head of the largest oil company in the world, at what point are working class Trump supporters going to start to fear that they've actually been duped?

Eventually the emotional high of those rallies are going to wear off, Hillary's emails will be forgotten and the reality of who the president-elect really is is finally going to set in - and for many current Trump supporters, that's going to be really scary.

Brownback & Kansas Republicans Target Judges

Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback

Over the past couple of years the troubling ongoing political saga of two-term Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has offered remarkable insight into the radical transformation of the Republican party on the state level.

Aided by a conservative majority state legislature, he has tried to transform Kansas into a radical conservative utopia by slashing taxes on businesses and the state's wealthiest citizens.

The results have been disastrous.


The tax cuts that further enriched well-off Kansas citizens led to plunging revenues that defunded essential state government services including public schools, social services and road maintenance.

As you may recall, back in March Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes authored Senate Bill 439 which would actually authorize state legislators to impeach State Supreme Court judges for striking down legislation that violates the state Constitution.

Previously the only grounds for impeaching a Kansas State Supreme Court judge were for offenses like "treason, bribery, or other high crimes misdemeanors", but state legislators trying to remove judges for essentially disagreeing with legislation that violates law reflects just how radical Republican Kansas politicians have become.

This unprecedented attack on the judiciary came in response to the State Supreme Court ruling that the drastic cuts in funding to the Kansas public school system (once considered among the nation's finest) passed by the Republican-majority state legislators with Brownback's blessing violated provisions of the state constitution that mandate adequate public education - and in true Republican fashion, also disproportionately targeted the state's poorest school districts for budget cuts.

Now, remarkably, Brownback and state legislators are going after the court again.

Today the editorial board of the New York Times published a scathing op-ed piece that calls out the Kansas legislature for attempting use the state's retention vote process in a blatantly opportunistic manner to try and oust the majority of the State Supreme Court.

As the Times op-ed observes; "Right-wing politicians who adhere to the fantasy that government is the problem, not the solution, are eager to politicize the courts."

Kansas State Supreme Court Justices

How are Kansas Republicans trying to do that?

In Kansas, the governor appoints state supreme court judges, but they then come up for a retention vote on the state ballot every six years.

As the Website  Ballotpedia notes, "Retention votes of state supreme court justices are usually among the least noted elections on the ballot. Each sitting justice is usually retained without fanfare."  

"Usually", but not this year.

The radically conservative Kansas state legislature is going all out to oust Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Marla Luckert, Carol Beier, Daniel Biles and Caleb Stegall.  

The legislature is doing it by, in part, drawing on untraceable money from out-of-state conservative groups (we see you Koch brothers) to partner with, and secretly fund, interest groups like Kansans For Justice to develop grass roots campaigns to persuade Kansas citizens to vote to remove the justices facing a retention vote this November 8th.

Essentially, these groups are trying to use their disagreement with between six and ten of the thousands of decisions the Kansas State Supreme Court has ruled on to vote them out.

But it's really a carefully calculated Republican effort to circumvent the basic checks and balances embedded in the American political system to stack the Kansas State Supreme Court with conservative appointees of Governor Sam Brownback who would be less likely to overrule the kind of radically conservative legislation he and the Republican legislators have tried to unleash in Kansas.      

That is straight out of the Banana Republic playbook and an overwhelming majority of Kansans don't like it.

As Yael T. Abouhalkah observed in a Kansas City Star article four months ago, a May poll of 66,000 Americans across all 50 states revealed that Sam Brownback remains the nations most unpopular governor with a 26% approval rating; that was even lower than Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder whose handling of the Flint Water crisis made him universally loathed.

But clearly that isn't stopping him from trying to be the architect of his twisted conservative fantasy, which for most people in Kansas, including public school students, is more of a nightmare.

As Kansas State Supreme Court Justice Marla Luckert observed of the court's decisions:

"I'm not saying that everyone should agree with the decisions I make or that my court makes. There is room for disagreement; we have dissent. We don't even agree ourselves sometime. But we all need, I believe, to step back and not be swept [by] the rhetoric, and instead think about what is the role of the courts in our democracy."

Aleksandr's Excellent Question

Culturegeist's Friday night DVD

Tonight was going to be a night off from blogging, director Christopher Nolan's 2014 scf-fi epic Interstellar was in my mailbox (from Netflix) when I got home from a long day's work and I was all set to make dinner, prop my feet up and watch it with my trusty cat Buster snoozing at my feet.

But I went to check my blog stats and saw that a reader named Aleksandr Petrov had posted an excellent comment in response to my previous blog in which I suggested that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's "Fairness Formula" isn't really fair.

Aleksandr asked:

"How about fairness to my children from (a) "rich" district? Why (should they) get nothing from state taxes I pay?"

Excellent question Aleksandr, and obviously a complex one, I'll postpone my interstellar adventure to try and answer it.


For those who haven't heard, on Tuesday Governor Christie announced an initiative he calls his "Fairness Formula", which would cap all state funding for New Jersey public schools students at $6,599 per pupil - regardless of the school.

Now Aleksandr's question echoes the feeling of many people in New Jersey, and I respect his concerns and felt compelled to offer an answer. I went to post my answer to to his comment but found I had exceeded the number of words Blogger.com allows in a reply comment; so I decided to just blog my answer.

From the context of Governor Christie's "Fairness Formula", I think a major part of the problem stems from the way that New Jersey's public schools are organized and funded. NJ school districts exist in silos broken up by individual districts, often a stones throw from one another, separated by communities where the tax base is more of a boundary than a physical barrier like a road, a fence or a river.

Inside the Supreme Court 

TopMastersInEducation.com posted an excellent analysis online that explores the impact of how the steady decrease in federal funding of American public schools over the years has put more and more of the financial burden on states and local municipalities and districts to fund their public schools:

The opening of the article points out that a 1973 Supreme Court decision ruled that a formula of public school funding based on local property taxes does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The end result is the situation we currently have here in NJ, and in many other states.

As the Top Masters article observes:

"Such a system has created what many school districts view as an unequal distribution of wealth that amounts to wealth discrimination, as more affluent school districts with more business and higher residential property values have been more able to raise more money from local sources than poor districts for more than 40 years now."

So with all due respect Aleksandr, your children do not get "nothing" from the taxes you pay, by their living in a more affluent district than say, East Orange or Trenton, they are getting a lot more in terms of the quality of the public school education they receive by virtue of your ability to afford to live where you do.

East Orange High School

It's far easier for the public schools in your district to attract more qualified teachers and administrators who want to ply their skills in an educational environment where the schools are adequately funded, are better organized and better managed.

Are all communities the same?

Obviously not.


And no one, including me, is going to fault you or any other hard-working parent who wants the best for their children.

To me, the silos and little fiefdoms in NJ are a waste of both human and physical capital.

Let's look at Mercer County as an example.

I was fortunate enough to graduate from West Windsor-Plainsboro South HS, regarded as one of the top public high schools in the nation for years.

WWPSHS is no more than about 15 minutes from Trenton Central HS; but in terms of the disparities in the quality of education, the management and administration of the school systems and the school facilities; they might as well be on different sides of the moon.

Is that the fault of the students growing up in urban districts with under-performing schools?

President Harry S. Truman

I would argue that it's the responsibility of the administrators and school board members, and their inability to operate more efficiently is partly to blame; like Harry S. Truman I'm a "Buck Stops Here" kinda guy.

I actually agree with some of the arguments Governor Christie used in announcing his "Fairness Formula' initiative.

On average Trenton spends about the 3rd highest in the state per pupil, yet they have one of the lowest graduation rates and one of the worst attendance rates in New Jersey.


The Newark school system was so dysfunctional, the state took it over; not that they did any better, was the state's decision to eliminate attendance counselors and truant officers in 2013 really a smart thing to do?

The state-takeover doesn't mean every administrator and teacher in the Newark public school system was a self-serving individual with no concern for the welfare of students - but decades of poor leadership like that has consequences in terms of attracting additional funding.

Earlier this spring, Trenton laid of 164 public school teachers because they were unable to secure additional state funds to help alleviate a $5.9 million deficit.

But if Christie had his way and cut over 50% of the state funding from Trenton schools (who already lost 164 teachers) where does that leave the children?

Some are migrating to charter schools like the highly respected Foundation Academy, one of the best (if not THE best) school in Trenton, where students adhere to strict dress and behavioral codes and parents are required to play an active role on working with the school to play an essential role as liason between teacher and student. And students excel there.

Chris Christie: Sorry urban public schools

But that's another part of the problem with Christie's "Fairness Formula".

Christie is very much guided by a privatization mindset, so stripping under-performing public schools of resources also serves his goal of channeling more taxpayer funds to charter schools.

So yes, Foundation Academy students are excelling, and that's a good thing.



But remember, these are the same kids from the same communities who'd otherwise be attending more poorly run schools in Trenton that have been marginalized in), charter schools are siphoning off talent (talented teachers, students & administrators) and badly needed taxpayer funds from public schools.

Which brings me back to Mercer County, if Mercer County had a unified school system, more resources would be available to all schools. Just consider what superintendents are making in each of these individual school districts.

A unified Mercer County school system would have more power and influence too.

Instead we rely on a formula where individual districts drive the funding for their schools, creating in effect, public schools which are essentially separate and unequal. Even though they may be only a few miles from one another.

Don't get me wrong, I don't pine for some kind of socialist utopian fantasy, what bothers me is how Americans have sat back and allowed the federal government to absolve itself of responsibility for sufficiently funding public schools; even as We the People fund disastrous wars in the middle east to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars. Why?

In part because of private conservative think tanks funded by people like the Koch brothers, people who literally have begun to endow chairs and departments at major universities to staff them with, and support people who view public education through the same anti-government privatization-mindset as Chris Christie does.

Remember Koch-puppet Gov Scott Walker (who didn't graduate from college...) cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the University of Wisconsin?

These think tanks have begun the process of placing like-minded "academics" on local school boards throughout the country, in fact the Camden superintendent is one such person; Christie's heavy involvement in the funding of new waterfront development in Camden is no coincidence.

So I hear your concern Aleksandr, and your children have a right to reap the rewards of the taxes you pay, but Christie is self-serving to his own political ambitions and willing to do what he can to allow New Jersey to function as some kind of "conservative socio-economic laboratory" where kooky ideologically-driven right-wing policies are proposed or enacted.

Kansas Gov Sam Brownback

Just take a look at what Republican Governor Sam Brownback has done to the state of Kansas (including it's once highly-regarded public schools) and the absolute disaster it's been for the state.

Christie is clever, and he knows he can use the lingering anger over the 1985 Abbott court decision as a wedge issue to garner support for a plan that would drastically slash state public school funding for urban schools in districts already facing a host of challenges, and magically increase state funding for wealthier districts - not in the interest of education.

But as a transparent Trojan Horse to gift the wealthiest districts in New Jersey with a property tax cut. Christie's proposal serves his own political ambitions, not the interests of public education in New Jersey.


And it reeks of coded racism.

The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife, conservative think tanks and politicians have slowly and steadily reduced the federal share of public school funding, while allowing a district-funded formula to take root, creating even more inequities based on class and race in the educational system of the greatest nation in the world.

And now a guy like Christie points to those underperforming schools in cities that have seen their tax bases decimated by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and urban blight, and says, "these schools are getting too much state funding, it's time to strip all these Abbott schools of at least 50% of their state funding, and give it to schools in wealthier districts."

And he calls it a "Fairness Formula"?