This is a fun site for Met fans with an interest in both the team’s history and in weird trivia. Check it out.
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Monetization: Not so popular with voters
This is really not very surprising.
When it comes to increasing state revenue, Governor Corzine appears to have put nearly all his eggs in the asset monetization basket. Media reports say that he is preparing to mount a high-profile public information campaign to win over the state. Results from the latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll indicate that he has a lot of work ahead of him.
In general, most New Jerseyans think the idea of “state asset monetization” – or more specifically, leasing toll roads or the lottery, allowing developers to build on train stations, and selling naming rights to state owned property like parks – is a bad one. Fully 55% say this concept is a bad idea compared to 33% who say it is a good one. The remainder have mixed feelings or no opinion. About 6-in-10 Republicans (58%) and independents (61%) give asset monetization a thumbs down, and even the governor’s fellow Democrats are more negative (46%) than positive (37%) on the idea.
The governor has not released specific plans on how he proposes to leverage state assets for revenue, but much of the public discussion focuses on operation of the state’s toll roads. The poll found that 59% of state residents specifically oppose leasing operation of the New Jersey Turnpike or Garden State Parkway even if the money were used for a specific purpose. Just 30% support the idea.
However, the public are just as opposed to other revenue-raising efforts that involve state assets. They oppose allowing developers to build over train stations 58% to 33%. They also oppose leasing operation of the state lottery 53% to 34%. And they even oppose selling the naming rights to state parks 54% to 37%. Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike oppose all these monetization ideas.
Also not surprising is this:
when faced with a forced choice between leasing state assets and raising taxes, New Jerseyans would give away the state assets by a 62% to 21% margin. Opinion is more divided if the choice is between leasing state assets (43%) and making significant cuts in education and other government services (44%).
Monmouth Polling Director Patrick Murray says this raises some questions.
“As a general concept, asset monetization, to use the governor’s parlance, just doesn’t sit well with New Jerseyans. While most residents would choose leasing state assets over raising taxes, it is really not clear that the public believes that the state has only these two options available.”
The question will probably come down to the specific choices placed on the table — meaning the specific cuts, the specific taxes and the impact all of this will have on the longterm fiscal health of the state and the state’s ability to reform its overall tax and government structures.
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Rush Holt says nothing
I mentioned last week that I’d pass along U.S. Rep. Rush Holt’s response to the $1 million in federal cash for a new — and unnecessary — MOM study. Here’s what he said (via an e-mail from his press officer, Matthew Dennis):
“Rail service can play a valuable role in making commutes more convenient, decreasing congestion, and protecting the environment. But we must choose rail lines that make sense from the perspective of economics, rider convenience, and environmental impact.”
Honestly, I expected a little more from a Congressman who has taken some tough stands and who may have an eye on Frank Lautenberg’s U.S. Senate seat.
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The false promise of experience
I’ve been waiting for someone to make this argument as effectively as Ari Berman does here:
I’d like to suggest that “experience” — a buzzword every election cycle — is also overrated.
At every turn Hillary Clinton invokes her years as First Lady and New York Senator as a not-so-subtle contrast to Barack Obama’s supposed inexperience. In his piece criticizing Obama this morning, my colleague David Corn writes that Clinton and John Edwards are “steeped in the nuances, language, and minefields of foreign policy.”
That tenure prompted both Clinton and Edwards to support the war in Iraq, along with virtually the entire Democratic foreign policy elite. They had years of PhDs, postings abroad and negotiations with dictators (the kind bemoaned by Clinton and embraced by Obama in last night’s YouTube debate) under their belt. And they came down on the wrong side of the biggest foreign policy question of their generation.
So it’s a little disturbing to see Clinton surrogates like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright giving reporters a tutorial today on how to negotiate with hostile regimes. In a follow-up interview with a newspaper in Iowa, Hillary piled on by calling Obama’s comments “irresponsible and frankly naive.”
Let’s step back a second. The Obama camp could argue that it was “irresponsible and frankly naive” for Senator Clinton to hand President Bush a blank-check to go to war and then claim that she was only giving the Administration the authorization to win over the United Nations and keep weapons inspectors in Iraq until they finished the job. It was painfully obvious, except maybe to Senators and their advisors in Washington, that Bush would use Congressional approval as a mandate to invade.
Those senators he’s talking about were the ones with experience.
I have not signed on to any bandwagon and I remain in flux about who I’d like in the White House when the disastrous Bush years finally come to a close.
But having spent the last 17 years talking with politicians and candidates at the local and state level, I know that experience is really only a small part of the equation.
First, experience tends to favor incumbents. Incumbents, by virtue of being in office, are more experienced.
In the case of the current crop of Democrats, for instance, experience should favor Joe Biden and Bill Richardson (maybe Chris Dodd). Anyone ready to get behind their gray eminences?
Second, experience is meaningless if there is no vision. Successful candidates — and presidents, etc. — have vision. Ronald Reagan had vision (I disagreed with it, but he had it) and John Kennedy had vision. Neither had the kind of experience one might think is required to sit in teh White House.
Jimmy Carter also lacked experience. But that’s not what I think killed his presidency. It was his lack of any real sense of where the country had to go, a lack of focus that could organize his policies and capture the imagination of the country.
Having someone with experience might be nice, but it’s not necessarily the best option.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Runner’s diary, Wednesday
Five miles in just under 50 minutes — a tough, slower-than-preferred run, but a productive one in that I stretched the length out on the road, rather than the treadmill.
Today on the iPod: a mix featuring Bob Dylan, The Clash, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Jones, the Kooks, the Beachboys, etc.
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