D’Angelo’s conservative attitudes

An interesting bit of information on Democratic candidate Wayne D’Angelo, via Politics NJ and the national Project Vote Smart organization:

Democrat Wayne D’Angelo is pro-life, supports the death penalty, and opposes Governor Jon Corzine’s plan to lease the New Jersey Turnpike, according to an issue survey D’Angelo submitted to the non-partisan Project Vote Smart.

According to the survey, D’Angelo says Abortion should be legal only when pregnancy results from incest or rape, or when the life of the woman is endangered, and he supports requiring clinics to give parental notification before performing abortion on minors.

He also supports voluntary prayer in public schools, and says he is undecided on New Jersey recognizing gay marriage or if he would support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman — but he did say the state should continue to recognize civil unions between same-sex couples. He took no positions on gun control issues, other than say that gun owners should be licensed.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Wait ’til next year

New Jersey Policy Perspective is calling the state’s latest budget a “Band-Aid” budget. And he’s right. In an op-ed on Sunday by Jon Shure in The Record and again in an e-mail “alert,” Shure and NJPP pretty much lay out the issues that the governor and Legislature delayed dealing with, in particular the structural deficit, the pension deficit and the dubious fiscal legacies of Govs. Whitman and McGreevey.

Overall, the budget was designed with November’s election in mind:

The kind of budget this would be was established back in February when the governor set a relatively low bar by saying he wasn’t about to ask legislators to make a heavy lift in a year when every seat in the Assembly and state Senate is up for election.

Next year will be different.

By the next budget season, lawmakers should have acted on Corzine’s soon-to-be-announced “asset monetization” plan for filling the deficit hole (or whatever is proposed if that doesn’t fly) and vetted a new school-funding formula, among other things.

We can expect a far more contentious and controversial round of budgeting. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Debating priorities and finding honest ways to pay for them can be messy. But in the long run, that’s better than denial.

Next year, New Jersey’s budgeteers should be judged by how much courage and vision they show — not how fast they can finish.

This year, well, let’s just hope the Band-Aid is enough to staunch teh bleeding.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Murdoch, Dow Jonesand the South Brunswick taxpayer

I tink Paul Krugman is correct about the potential sale of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. It will be a dark day for journalism if it happens.

It also could create issues in South Brunswick, where Dow Jones has its headquarters and a major regional printing plant. (And ramifications for my own financial security — my wife works there.) Should Murdoch opt to layoff large numbers of Dow Jones employees, close the Kilgore facility (named for the father of the Packet’s publisher) or severely alter its use, it could cause a change in its tax valuation and reduce the amount it has to pay for taxes. At one time — I don’t have the current numbers — Dow Jones was paying 2 cents of every tax dollar collected by the township. That’s not chump change by any means. If its tax payments are cut, then the rest of us who live in South Brunswick will have to pick up the rest of the tab.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.