Running interference

This report — criticized by Republicans — is wholly consistent with the history of the Bush administration on matters of science and the environment.

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency initially supported giving California full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions, but reversed himself after hearing from the White House, a Congressional report says.

The report, by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, cites sworn depositions by high-level officials of the agency and amounts to the first solid evidence of the political interference alleged by Democrats and environmentalists since the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, denied California’s request in December.

Tuesday Top 10 (dirty dozen?) Dylan

My Dylan list:

  1. Highway 61 Revisited
  2. Blonde on Blonde
  3. Blood on the Tracks
  4. Bringing It All Back Home
  5. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
  6. Love and Theft
  7. Modern Times
  8. John Wesley Harding
  9. Another Side of Bob Dylan
  10. Desire
  11. The Times They Are A-Changin’
  12. Oh Mercy / Time Out of Mind / Bob Dylan / Nashville Skyline (tie)

No surprises, I guess.

A bit of context on taxes

A little context on the tax question:

  • My friend Ed pays significantly more than I do for a smaller house in Long Island than I do in South Brunswick. My $6,500 is probably less than two thirds of his bill.
  • I paid $2.04 for a cup of Starbucks at a supermarket in Virginia yesterday — a cup that would have cost me $1.98 at home. The difference was the sales tax, which came to 19 cents, compared with the 13 cents on the cup in New Jersey.
  • Toll roads are the norm down here — it is difficult to find a non-tolled highway.

Take this information and do with it what you will.

Reversing course again

The Corzine administration is looking increasingly like a rudderless boat lost at sea. The administration has spent the better part of its three years in control of the state offering controversial proposals and then backing away from them, allowing the state Legislature and the special interests that surround it to fill the vaccuum.

The latest reversal is his decision to restore some of the cuts he proposed in aid to smaller municipalities. While I’ve never viewed the aid cuts as a good idea — using aid as a hammer is unfair; if the governor wants large-scale consolidation he should push the state Legislature to mandate a broad study and then have the Legislature vote on the results — the governor’s willingness to abandon nearly everything he has proposed when faced with political opposition has left him weak and ineffectual.

It is no way to run a state and a waste of the executive’s office — the most powerful executive’s office in the country.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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