Juan Melli's Blog

It's actually come to this: A panel convened by the legislature of the State of New Jersey has concluded that discrimination is not good. Maybe someday we can look back and laugh, but for now, it's a sad and necessary step toward progress.

The 13-member Civil Union Review Commission tasked with "evaluating the implementation, operation and effectiveness" of the civil union law passed nearly two years ago released its final report today unanimously recommending that "The Legislature and Governor amend the law to allow same-sex couples to marry" and that it be "enacted expeditiously because any delay in marriage equality will harm all the people of New Jersey."

After the entire Star-Ledger editorial board opted to accept the paper's buyout offer, John Farmer, a 26-year veteran of the paper, was tasked with rebuilding its editorial page. Farmer, who has 50 years experience in the industry, is a safe choice and offers a measure of steadiness which might be welcome during this period of turbulence and transition.

On the flip side, those qualities could be less than optimal while the news business struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing media environment.

Last week, Star-Ledger reporter Kelly Heyboer conducted a video interview with the new editorial page editor on his first day on the job. The most interesting exchange came when Heyboer mentioned that "people can go on the Internet to get their opinions, to express their opinions," and asked Farmer how he felt about the fact that "a lot of people say there's no need for a newspaper editorial board or opinion pages anymore."

Last week's fight between Henry Waxman and John Dingell for chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce committee also featured a less visible battle waged by U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone -- only the latest in a series of moves to effectively position himself for a potential promotion to the Senate.

Soon after the election, Pallone joined Waxman's whip operation to take on the automakers' leading advocate in Congress in what appeared to be a long shot, unprecedented challenge to the seniority system. It was a gutsy move that paid off. His support was largely under the radar, but it's the kind of step that will get observers in Washington to take him more seriously.

Working against Pallone was Rob Andrews, who whipped votes for Dingell. Just as in his primary senate challenge to Frank Lautenberg, none of his colleagues from the state delegation backed him in that effort. Most insiders no longer consider Andrews a serious contender for Senate.

That currently leaves U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman as Pallone's most likely serious opponent for the seat. Rothman was an early supporter of Barack Obama and served as his campaign's Northeast Regional co-chairman, while Pallone was a high-profile Hillary Clinton supporter. But Rothman's greatest advantage may be that he hails from the 9th Congressional District which includes portions of Bergen and Hudson counties -- the Democratic party base.

In an election year driven by a hemorrhaging economy and an electorate hungry for an end to divisive politics, 7th Congressional District candidate Linda Stender positioned herself on the wrong side of the Democratic wave.

The election marked a desire for change in both policy and politics. The Southern Strategy is dead. Barack Obama fought for votes in all corners of the country and won in places the pundits said he had no business even competing. Talk of the "Real America" and accusations of anti-Americanism looked petty in the context of our nation's challenges, particularly while most Americans worried about their jobs and lost retirement savings. The divisive issues that characterized the Bush era were but an asterisk in the presidential race, and when they did surface, the Karl Rove strategy of divide, distract and conquer failed to deliver. Despite Californians narrowly voting for the bigoted Proposition 8, they still delivered Obama a crushing margin over McCain. The grip of fear over the electorate has weakened.

Exhausted from years of excessive political divisiveness, voters of all stripes turned to Barack Obama because he embodied a spirit of respect, cooperation, and bipartisanship (not to be confused with centrism).

If there are parallels between the presidential and 7th Congressional District races, they buck the national trends that swept Obama and other Democrats into office. In this case, it was Leonard Lance -- a self-described Eisenhower Republican with a long record of reaching across the aisle, whose temperament offered voters a change of pace from the politics of the past.

"New Jersey voters deserved a better race this year than the nearly invisible contest between Senator Frank Lautenberg and Richard Zimmer, his Republican challenger," begins the New York Times' endorsement of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Although accurate, a generous interpretation of this seemingly hypocritical charge is that it is in fact a veiled criticism of their own paper's decision to ignore the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey. Not once has the Times written a story about the general election contest between Frank Lautenberg and Dick Zimmer. (By comparison, Cynthia Burton at the Philadelphia Inquirer has written 11 pieces on the race.)

To add insult to injury, Zimmer told PolitickerNJ: "One of the editors of the New York Times who interviewed me for their editorial thought I was still a member of Congress."

Politicians spin for a living, but they're rarely held accountable for what they say after the fact. So today I'm taking a look back on what they were saying about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin when she was announced as John McCain's vice presidential running mate.

State Sen. Bill Baroni predicted that Palin would appeal to "a broad spectrum of New Jersey voters," especially the state's "vast independent voting bloc." Asked about accusations that she pressured the former Commissioner of Public Safety to fire a state trooper, Baroni replied: "There's no evidence of it. It will be completely vetted [in] the next 48 hours."

In fact a bipartisan legislative panel found that Palin violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act when she "abused her power in pushing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper."

Baroni wasn't as far off on the other point, though. In the latest Survey USA poll, McCain leads among independents in New Jersey by 45 to 40 percent, although voters who identify as "moderate" break for Obama by 58 to 36 percent. Still, Obama has a 15 point lead in the poll.

State Sen. Kevin O'Toole called the Palin pick "a stroke of brilliance." If this is his idea of brilliance, I don't want to know what other good ideas O'Toole has in store.

While New Jersey suffered from a crippling structural deficit, politicians created a slush fund to dole out tax dollars for their own personal gain.

Last week at the corruption trial of disgraced former state Sen. Wayne Bryant, a Democratic legislative aide testified that Bryant and other legislators were given complete discretion over the allocation of millions of dollars in the state budget -- from a fund that was supposed to be distributed based on a competitive, merit-based application process. Prosecutors allege that Bryant directed some of his share to the School of Osteopathic Medicine at UMDNJ in exchange for a no-show, pension-boosting job.

The separation of powers were non-existent in 2005 when the budget's $40 million slush fund was proposed by then-acting Gov. Dick Codey and ushered through the legislature by Senate President Codey (a prior budget from then-Gov. Jim McGreevey also included such a fund). Governor Jon Corzine shut the scheme down within months of taking office after conducting an internal investigation, the results of which are still not public.

Bribery and money laundering may be illegal for almost everyone else, but not for politicians. They call it "pay-to-play" and "wheeling." The party in power almost always benefits from these structural advantages, so politicians love to rail against corruption when they're powerless to do anything about it, but then sit on their hands and make excuses when they could actually change the system.

When Gov. Jim Florio proposed an ethics reform package in 1992 -- partly to fulfill the campaign promises he had made three years earlier -- Republican leaders who controlled both the Assembly and Senate criticized him, saying the plan was politically-motivated. Sound familiar?

During a decade of state-wide Republican control, pay-to-play and wheeling continued as Republicans easily out-raised Democrats. That is, until Jon Corzine ran for Senate (and later governor) and Democrats regained a majority in the legislature. Suddenly, fixing this broken and corrupt system became a top GOP priority and popular campaign refrain.

With the tables turned, Republicans introduced a series of reform measures in 2006 which Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman called a "warmed-over stew of existing legislative measures." Yes it was, but the stew had gotten pretty cold in the hands of Democrats.

Bergen County is apparently immune from the "change" bug that has swept the rest of the nation.

Not even a federal investigation and eight-count indictment could convince Bergen County Democrats to dump their long-time corrupt leader Joe Ferriero. Note how three Democrats responded to calls from other elected officials for their chairman to step down:

"Steve Rothman ought to know better...he knows the constitutional presumption of innocence." -Freeholder David Ganz

"Everybody's presumed innocent..." -Surrogate Michael Dressler

"We all have the presumption of innocence..." -Sheriff Leo McGuire

If this were college, they'd be expelled for plagiarism, but in Ferriero's Bergen County that kind of lemming-like ability to follow orders is demanded and rewarded. It's embarrassing to see these supposedly grown men get played like fiddles by the state's new poster boy for corruption, but they've been doing it for so long they don't know anything else.

On Election Day 1872, Susan Brownwell Anthony, a life-long Republican and community organizer, boasted to a friend that she had "positively voted the Republican ticket -- Strait." Two weeks later, she was arrested and eventually tried and convicted for illegally voting in a presidential election -- a right women were denied for another half century. She never paid the fine.

This year's historic candidacy of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama wouldn't even be possible without the work of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin might not even be allowed to vote, let alone run for office had it not been for women's suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony.

But that thought probably didn't cross her mind last week at the Republican National Convention when she compared her experience to Obama's: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

It's a farcical insult, especially when almost within the same breath, Palin told us that her own political career began with a community organization. "I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better," she said without a hint of irony.