I’m going to hold my fire on Senator Bob Menendez for a little bit, despite my dislike for his politics, my low opinion of his ethics, and the fact that I haven’t been this unsurprised by an indictment since Vince Fumo finally, at long last, got his comeuppance. Yeah, I don’t like him much but that doesn’t mean that I am going to start spewing about his obvious guilt before I have even read the prosecutor’s case against him.
Having said that, I don’t like to see people bend over backwards to avoid stating the obvious, which is that the New Jersey Democratic Party, and the Hudson County machine in particular, are embarrassing sewers of corruption, and have been for all of our lives.
I much prefer how Olivia Nuzzi just comes out and says it.
For every Menendez or [former Gov. Jim] McGreevey, there are dozens other small-ball crooks and creeps populating New Jersey’s public offices. [Bob] Ingle told me what has struck him most about the type of corruption most commonly seen in the Garden State is how “how small the amount of bribery or thievery these people will be involved in.”
New Jersey is a blue state that has basically no choice but to cough up the occasional Christie Todd Whitman or Chris Christie because the Democrats are not good trustworthy public servants. When the Democrats try to find someone untarnished by bribes, they wind up tapping Goldman Sachs executives like Jon Corzine who promptly show that small-ball crooks are preferable to real professionals.
So, setting aside my anger with Menendez over his positions on Iran and Cuba, I’m mad at him simply for rising to the top of the Hudson County machine and forcing the whole state party’s apparatus to rally to his defense today.
I’d like to indict the whole system, but I’ll wait to look at the details before I approve the specific indictment of Menendez.
And then there’re the New Jersey Republicans.
Having left New Jersey some forty years ago, I can assure you that there is a long and cherished history of corruption in the Garden State.
This kind of bullshit is why the Democrats lost Congress in the early 90s. If Republicans aren’t enough to make one cynical about politics, this kind of crap will be. Corruption is super highly toxic to the party that claims government can make our lives better. Our entire party needs to be serious about using the public sphere to make things better for our society; not lining one’s own pockets.
Yup. It had nothing to do with the demonization of healthcare,the rise of right-wing talk radio, the business community being antagonized by tax hikes, the Democratic Party being perceived as overly gay-friendly or indifferent to the crime wave, the NRA pounding the hell out of the new gun control restrictions, or, above all else, the re-alignment of the South. No no, it was the scattered waves of corruption and ossification in Democratic-controlled legislatures.
Why is it so hard for leftists to accept that demographics made 1972-2008 pretty much unwinnable for a non-triangulating Democratic Party? Why do we have to shove a bunch of blame onto black swans and unquantifiable factors like the Iranian hostage crisis or Mondale/Dukakis’s weak campaigns or corruption allegations?
be sure to look at, and write about, Albio Sires
Also how they use the office of Freeholders
Do New Jersey and Louisiana balance each other out regionally?
Two sides of the same coin.
This kind of thing is nothing new in Jersey Democratic politics. I don’t think they’ve ever recovered from Frank Hague, long time mayor and boss of Jersey City. Here’s an immortal quote from the man:
“We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, ‘That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.’ You never heard a real American talk in that manner.” – speech to the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce, January 12, 1938.
I should have said, Jersey has never recovered from Frank Hague AND Nucky Johnson.
http://www.northjersey.com/arts-and-entertainment/books/author-to-talk-in-fort-lee-about-nucky-johns
on-frank-hague-political-bosses-of-old-jersey-1.693399