The Jaffe Briefing - January 23, 2018
OUR TAKE ON THE NEWS IN NEW JERSEY
TRENTON - What's a billion dollars among friends? It looks like New Jersey taxpayers - and their children and grandchildren - will be embracing $1 billion in long-term debt to pay for some current goodies - like a renovated State House, new offices in Trenton and perhaps a pedestrian strip at Rutgers. Not a nickel of this $1 billion went before voters, prompting this question: Why do some capital expenses require voter approval, and others not? The Record reports there is a way around annoying ballot questions that require voter support: Structure bond payments as leases, with the state serving as the landlord. Sounds brilliant, except our state has the second-lowest credit rating and huge - and growing - debt that someone, at some time, needs to actually pay back.
ON THE RAILS - The flurry of daily executive orders continues to fly out of the governor's office, as Gov. Phil Murphy keeps checking off to-do items on his laundry list. Today's hot topic is NJ Transit, as the governor is calling for an audit of the transit agency that he has bluntly dubbed "a national disgrace." This audit will likely read like a mystery/horror novel, as commuters will learn where all the money goes, and where it doesn't. Murphy says the audit is all part of a grand plan to boil the agency down (hopefully in a steamy cauldron) and then rebuild from the ash.
ON THE RAILS - The next victim (a.k.a., executive director of NJ Transit) is getting ready to step up, possibly hired as early as next week.The governor is expected to nominate an executive with AECOM for what has to be one of the most difficult, high-pressured jobs in America. NJ.com, citing unnamed sources, threw the name out. It would be interesting if an AECOM leader took the job; that firm planned the ARC Tunnel, which Gov. Chris Christie famously cancelled. Maybe this new director can ensure the Gateway tunnel stays on track.
NEW BRUNSWICK - You marched. You shouted. Now what? Tens of thousands of New Jerseyans demanded equality and fairness in the women's marches this weekend, generating a huge amount of recycling tonnage in the process. Now Rutgers University wants all those protest signs for an eternity. The university's archives, located at Alexander Library on its main campus, is asking protestors to donate their signs so they can be studied by future generations, TAPInto New Brunswick reports. Signs like "Trump Is a Schmuck" should spark terrific debate among our future scholars.
TRENTON - So, a Princeton plasma physicist gets elected to the State Legislature. What the heck do you do with him? Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker, now in his second term, has become the chair of the "Assembly Science Committee," set to have its very first meeting on February 1. It is a great fit, as the powers-that-be dream of New Jersey as the eastern version of Silicon Valley. And now they have the perfectly-qualified guy to make that happen. (No pressure, though.)
PHILADELPHIA - Stunned to write that "America's Dad" is back on stage. Unbelievable that any comedy club would book Bill Cosby, but he was on the stage last night, yukking about his blindness and causing an uproar on social media. Cosby, 80, appeared at the LaRose Jazz Club, marking his first show since 2015 and occurring a few weeks before his April retrial for a 2004 alleged sexual assault in the same city where he was performing. With dozens of sexual assault allegations now under his belt, it was widely assumed Cosby's stand-up career was dead. But apparently no one told this comedy club.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 2014 that Justin Bieber was busted for drunk driving, street racing and resisting arrest. Unfortunately, the stunt was not career-ending.
WORD OF THE DAY
Synchronicity - [sing-kruh-NISS-uh-tee] - noun
Definition: The coincidental occurrence of events (especially psychic ones) that seem related but are not easily explained
Example: I've been listening to The Police sing "Synchronicity" for decades, with no clue what the word means.
WEATHER IN A WORD
Soaker