Has anyone else noticed a pattern of “progressive” Democrats venting their frustrations on small-town people?

Gov. Jon Corzine has targeted small towns with a grossly unfair school aid funding formula and the reduction or total elimination of municipal aid. Corzine claims the state of New Jersey just can’t afford small towns any more.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama tells his San Francisco supporters that small-town people in Pennsylvania are “bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment”.

Recently we were discussing the idea of Initiative and Referendum and explained that we couldn’t think of a better way to ensure tyranny by the majority and further reduce the accountability of politicians, especially in a state such as New Jersey.

Not surprisingly, Tom Byrne, former Chairman of the New Jersey Democratic Party, is now pushing the idea - Modified I&R Could Work - on the Star-Ledger’s NJ Voices opinion forum.

Rampant political corruption in New Jersey is a hidden tax that each year takes a $1 billion dollars out of the wallets of New Jersey taxpayers, according to a Rutgers study produced by the Prudential Business Ethics Center.

The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran on the worst New Jersey's political machines has to offer:

The latest example is Sandra Cunningham, who is running for Senate as the choice of the infamous Hudson County Democrats.

Cunningham says her main concerns are crime, jobs and housing. Sounds reasonable. So how would she address those problems?

"I have not really come up with solutions," she says. "We need to come up with an urban plan, to try to come up with programs that address these issues."

The truth is the Democratic Party chose Cunningham because her husband was popular, and because she's an African-American candidate in a district where roughly half the voters are, too. Her opponent in Tuesday's primary, Assemblyman Lou Manzo, is white.

You have to wonder: Is this really the best and the brightest of Hudson County?

To be fair, Moran should have mentioned Lou Manzo hasn’t really come up with “solutions” either - just a laundry list of platitudes. Power and spending other people’s money are the New Jersey Democratic Party’s main concerns; nominating the best and brightest would only be an impediment.

The former Justice Department liaison to the White House Monica Goodling was questioned before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Much of Rep. Steve Cohen, (D-TN) questioning dealt with Goodling’s education:

Rep. Steve Cohen: Miss Goodling, I've read your vitae, and it says that you grew up and you mostly went -- you went to public schools. Was that K through 12?

Goodling: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Cohen: And it says you went -- chose Christian universities in part because they -- value they placed on service.

Are there a lot -- an inordinate number -- of people from Regent University Law School that were hired by the Department of Justice while you were there?

Goodling: I think we have a lot more people from Harvard and Yale.

Rep. Cohen: Well, that's refreshing. Is it a fact -- are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar (exam) the first time?

Goodling: I'm not -- I don't remember the statistics, but I know it wasn't good. I was happy I passed the first time.

The sole purpose of Cohen’s line of questioning was to potentially embarrass Goodling and denigrate the Christen law school she attended. It was nothing more than the 'politics of personal destruction' in action. And if passing the bar on the first try, as Goodling did, is the Democrat’s litmus test for public service, then Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate, is in trouble.

Hillary Clinton failed the D.C. bar exam after law school, something she hid from her best friends for 30 years until disclosing it in passing in her autobiography, "Living History." Bernstein suggests that blow to her ego may have played a role in her decision to move to Arkansas, where she had passed the bar.

The publicity hound, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School, also questioned Goodling:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: But allow me just to simply begin a series of questions, Ms. Goodling. And I would ask that they, your answers be as cryptic and as brief as possible, however truthful, because we do have a shortened period of time.

“Cryptic”? There’s nothing quite like being grilled by a bunch of condescending, sanctimonious politicians on a witch hunt.

Back in March, Bob Ingle discovered Democrats had a state-paid intern going through years of financial-disclosure forms from state legislators. Republicans suspected the effort was an election-year opposition research project being conducted at taxpayer expense. Back then, Democrats claimed the intern was looking for ways to strengthen disclosure.

Yesterday, Democrats exposed the real purpose of the project. Two County Democratic Party Chairmen have filed ethics complaints against seven Republican legislators “as current events on Legislative conflicts gave me cause to review the relevant files and the information contained herein only recently came to light”. In other words, taxpayers paid the research tab for a partisan stunt. Is that ethical or even legal?

Clearly, the Democrats are out for revenge to counter the growing list of Democrats who have been investigated, indicted and convicted for public corruption by the U.S. Attorney’s office, led by Chris Christie. If that was the goal, their little project was a bust.

The complaints, which may be read here, allege the lawmakers “may have advocated for” a number of state grants from 2000 through 2002. “Based on financial disclosure forms” the complaints identify employers and charity affiliations for the legislators and in some instances for their family members. Missing from the complaints are specific conflicts of interest or cases of personal financial gain tied to the state grants.

Not surpassingly, the ethics complaints were filed by two attorneys, Richard J. Perr and Elia A. Pelios, both with their own pipelines into state and local coffers.

Perr is a partner at the law firm Fineman Krekstein & Harris and an adjunct professor Rutgers School of Law - Camden. In his spare time, Perr is also the Burlington County Democratic Party Chairman.

The second complaining attorney, Elia A. Pelios, works for the law firm Ventantonio & Wildenhain, is Commissioner/President of the Somerset County Board of Taxation and President of the New Jersey Association of County Tax Boards. In his spare time, Pelios is also the Somerset County Democratic Party Chairman.

New Jersey’s Attorney General, Stuart Rabner should investigate these two with their tangled financial, political and government connections - that’s if he can spare a few minutes away from his all important Corzine seatbelt case.

During state budget negotiations last June, Senator, John Adler (D-Cherry Hill), called for reducing New Jersey’s 154,000 workforce by 2,000 jobs to help close the budget gap. Governor Jon Corzine responded to Adler's proposal with, “It is curious that Mr. Adler decided to send this letter on the 98th day of budget negotiations, but we will throw it into the pile."

More than 300 days later, Corzine still hasn’t touched the pile of ideas to reduce state spending. New Jersey’s state budget has gone from $27.4 billion in 2006 to Corzine’s proposed $33.3 billion budget for 2008. That’s an 18 percent increase in state spending in just two years.

Earlier this year the governor said, “I didn’t run for public office to be a number cruncher, or to play scrooge”. Which is slightly different from the line he used when running for governor – “As a former businessman, Corzine has never seen a budget he couldn’t cut – and that experience will allow him to scrub the state budget, line-by-line.”

It’s been 809 days since we wrote:

Senator Corzine would have you believe his wealth puts him beyond the reach of special interest groups. But Jon Corzine can’t afford to alienate state workers if he hopes to become the next Governor of New Jersey. Corzine will buy the votes of government employees, not with his money, but with yours. A candidate in the pocket of teachers and other state workers can not bring real reform and fiscal sanity to Trenton.

We were right. State workers are now crowing about the best deal they’ve negotiated in 15 years and for good reason. No layoffs and Corzine has rewarded state employees with a new budget busting contract that tightens their stranglehold on New Jersey’s taxpayers.

So where’s New Jersey’s legislature on this? It’s been a mighty quite budget season since the Democrats announced their own vote buying scheme.

Blue Jersey’s “hunstu” has written two more blog posts about Chris Christie in a vain attempt to prove the U.S. Attorney’s corruption-busting record is being exaggerated and that he’s involved in some sort of conspiracy to damage Democrats. Posts here and here.

What better way for ‘huntsu” to prove his point than to provide links to sources contradicting his theory?

Such as this link to a September 14, 2006 post by Wally Edge on Politics NJ:

Christie is a Republican who served as a Morris County Freeholder and as a leader of George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign in New Jersey, but accusing the corruption-busting federal prosecutor of playing partisan politics is a tough sell.

Or to provide this link to a January 12, 2006 article in the Westfield Leader:

“After helping to put 86 elected officials in jail during his first term as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Chris Christie last week vowed to continue his fight against public corruption.”

In his most recent post, “huntsu” has compiled a spreadsheet of so-called "investigations" by Chris Christie’s office since 2002. The list is an odd mix of indictments, convictions and other stuff in the news. It’s also loaded with errors and is useless for any meaningful analysis. Below are just a few random examples of the errors contained in their “investigations list”.

David Chang is listed for giving illegal campaign contributions to former Senator Robert Torricelli and Audrey Yu is listed for a related obstruction of justice charge. The spreadsheet indicates neither has been convicted. Of course both were convicted in 2000. However, the Chang and Yu cases predated Christie’s term as U.S. Attorney.

Former Camden mayor Milton Milan is listed for public corruption, but the list falsely indicates there was no conviction. Milan was convicted of various corruption charges in 2000, again predating Christie’s term as U.S. Attorney.

The Democratic State Committee and Jim McGreevey are both listed for “Machiavelli-gate”, but apparently “huntsu” is counting each line item as a separate “investigation” with no outcome. David D'Amiano, is listed as being convicted for arranging bribes, albeit without noting he was the middleman in Machiavelli-gate.

West Long Branch Mayor Paul Zambrano is listed as taking bribes, but not as convicted - Zambrano pled guilty as charged.

West Long Branch councilman Joseph DeLisa is twice listed for taking bribes. He’s shown as not convicted on page 2 and convicted on page 3. DeLisa pled guilty and was sentenced to15 months in federal prison.

Patsy Townsend, Monmouth County deputy fire marshal is listed for taking bribes, but not listed as convicted. Townsend pled guilty.

We could go on, but there’s little point in spending more time on Blue Jersey’s conspiracy theories, useless “investigations” spreadsheet, faulty analysis and baseless charges against U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

Blue Jersey blogger, “huntsu”, is still on a quest to prove U.S. Attorney, Christ Christie, is a partisan hack. This time he’s taking on The Trentonian's Jeff Edelstein for writing that Christie’s office has charged and convicted 105 people for public corruption.

Sorry, Jeff. But Christie only claims 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday, and not the 105 convictions Edelstein claims. If this weren't a column in the Trentonian a retraction would be in order for such a wild exaggeration of fact.

Sorry “huntsu”, but Christie didn’t “claim 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday”. A reporter, not Christie, cited a number in the link you provided. There is no mention in the article about the number of public corruption investigations undertaken. Here’s the quote from the linked piece:

Critics have charged that Christie has pursued Democrats to help his party. But his 125 public corruption cases have targeted officials from both parties.

“Hunstu” continues conflating investigations, indictments and convictions. The number of indictments can be determined, but the total number of investigations are not a matter of public record and therefore are unknown. Not every investigation ultimately leads to a person being indicted and of course not everyone indicted will plead guilty or be found guilty at trial. But, so far Christie office has won every case that has reached the courts.

“Huntsu” hasn’t provided the number of people indicted for public corruption, but has arrived at a total of those convicted. We’ll assume his conviction total includes all public corruption cases brought to a conclusion while Christie has been in office. But who knows, “huntsu” hasn’t provided a list. Here’s what he’s come up with:

A review of the NJ US Attorney's Office press releases provides just 59 convictions, 21 of Republicans, 37 of Democrats and one we could not determine a party affiliation for. That leaves another 46 for Edelstein to find. Or retract.

But Edelstein's number was about investigations, so let's see if that proves the point.

Edelstein's number did not include “investigations”, just indictments and convictions as is quite clear from his column.

“Huntsu” also lays this on his readers:

Of the 150 people we found who have been investigated, indicted or convicted only 33 are Republicans and 112 are Democrats. Five are unknown.

We'll do a more in-depth analysis in a later post, but the preliminary review shows that Democrats are 300 percent more likely to be investigated than Republicans, a number far out of whack with the true ratio of party identification or elected officials. Dems are only 175 percent as likely to be convicted.

First. There is no way to know the number of Democrats and the number of Republicans who have been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office. The vast majority of investigations only come to light when someone is indicted or the media reports that subpoenas have been issued.

The number of subpoenas issued does not equal the number of criminal investigations underway. Hundreds of subpoenas can be issued in the investigation of just one person’s possible wrongdoing. And one subpoena may be all that’s necessary to prosecute hundreds of people.

Second. Investigations are launched on the basis of information and evidence of possible wrongdoing, not on a party affiliation quota system. The same holds true for indictments.

Third. Public corruption cases include those involving public employees of every stripe, not just elected officials.

Fourth. This is speculation on our part, but we’ll go out on a limb and say the number of public employees who are Democrats far outweighs the number who are Republicans. If we’re correct, it stands to reason a far greater number of people in position to commit corruption offenses are Democrats and therefore, more likely to get caught committing an offense.

Fifth. Certainly there are people who have been indicted, but yet to be found guilty or not guilty. That would be because their case has yet to come before the court. However, every person charged with political corruption, whose case has come before the court, has been convicted. That would be 100% of Republicans and 100% of Democrats.

Tom Moran’s column today is about New Jersey’s “left-wing noise machine” and the “conspiracy theorists who consider U.S. Attorney Chris Christie a partisan hack” because he’s investigating the possibility Democrats might be involved in political corruption. This is a truly shocking development considering New Jersey’s place in “the unholy trinity of politically corrupt states”.

With every major city and all three branches of state government controlled by Democrats, not to mention the majority of congressional seats, checking up on Democrats holding New Jersey’s purse strings might be a smart move.

Still, the lefty conspiracy theory holds that without political pressure from the Bush administration Christie’s investigations of Senator Bob Menendez and more recently, a boatload of Democrats seated in Trenton wouldn’t be happening. After all, the New Jersey State Attorney hasn’t noticed any problems, just Christie.

But in that case, we would surely have heard from one or two of the career prosecutors in his [Christie's] office by now, at least anonymously. Why would a guy like Ralph Marra, Christie's first assistant and a Democrat, go along with a partisan scam?

Why indeed?

Democrats and lefty bloggers began their attack on Christie long before the Bush administration replaced eight U.S. Attorneys - right about the time Christie’s office started investigating high-profile New Jersey politicians with a “D” next to their name.

One senior Democrat who asked not to be named said a group of "high-end" Democrats met to discuss this recently, and all felt the firings strengthened their case that Christie is using his office to sabotage Democrats.

That view is gaining some ground. The lefty blog BlueJersey.com suggested Christie has kept his job because he is doing the White House's bidding by going after Democrats on corruption charges. And New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that the firings make the bias charges against Christie "quite plausible.".

Gee, it’s almost sounds like a coordinated attack on Christie from the left. And funny, the New York Times and Blue Jersey bloggers were a bit more skeptical about Bob Menendez when Jon Corzine appointed him as his replacement in the U.S. Senate.

There have been 75 corruption indictments in New Jersey over the last four years. The public has a right to yearn for a break from the past, and Mr. Menendez does not represent a clean slate. – NYT:December 9, 2005

Wasn’t it the Star-Ledger that uncovered the questionable rental deal involving Menendez that led to Christie’s investigation?

Sorry, but Menendez asked for that one. He chose to rent his home to a group that received his help in Washington. Should a federal prosecutor look the other way when faced with such a clear conflict?

Apparently, the answer from the left is yes, if the politician is a “progressive” Democrat.

And didn’t Senator Menendez “reach out” to the U.S. Attorney's Office about the subpoenas Christie served on the non-profit receiving Menendez's “help”? Yes he did. Does that “yes” by Menendez count on Blue Jersey’s list of politicians contacting the U.S. Attorney?

More recently, Democrats have been grumbling about the subpoenas in Trenton aimed at finding criminal abuses in the state's budget process. But, please -- anyone who has watched the way Democrats grab money for pet causes in the final days would agree that it's an excellent place to sniff around for corruption.

Christie has prosecuted more than 115 public corruption cases in New Jersey since becoming U.S. attorney in 2002, and he hasn't lost a single one. That’s the real problem Democrats have with Christie, he’s just too darn good at his job. Can’t stop the corrupt gravy train that’s helping to bankrupt the state - that would be an abuse of political power.

We see the Blue Jersey blog has been supplanted with the new PoliticsNJ.com website. Apparently, the moneyed people have made their move to take over the liberal side of the New Jersey blogosphere.

"Wally Edge," announced that the site had been bought by the Observer Media Group, owner of the weekly New York Observer.

Observer owner and publisher Jared Kushner confirmed Thursday that he'd arranged to buy the site for an undisclosed sum a month earlier.

A new owner, new design, new staff and new bloggers were unveiled Thursday for a Web site that has become a mainstay among those who can't get enough of the Garden State's dramatic and sometimes corrupt politics.

The Kushners, including Jared, have long been mega contributors to the Democratic Party.

You may remember the Kushner family being in the news, especially, Charles Kushner, Jared’s father. Charles Kushner was a major backer and pal of disgraced former senator Bob Torricelli and was known as ex-governor Jim McGreevey’s ‘main man’.

“It was no accident that when Bill Clinton was president, he made several appearances at Kushner functions in Florham Park. And so, especially, had Governor James McGreevey, who, more than any of the others, was a political creature built of his [Kushner’s] will and cash.”

“Kushner Cos. has been Senator Menendez's biggest donor in the past five years.” Charles Kushner even teamed up with Jon Corzine in an attempt to buy the New Jersey Nets basketball team in 2004 - the deal apparently fell apart when the partners couldn’t get the state to help fund the purchase.

Charles Kushner is also the guy who pled guilty to 18 federal crimes that included: making illegal campaign contributions, lying to the Federal Election Commission, tax fraud, hiring a prostitute and using videotapes to try to entrap his brother-in-law to stop him from cooperating with the Feds. He’s out of prison now.

We suppose Blue Jersey will be kept around to organize and raise cash for Democrats. PoliticsNJ is now “the center of gravity for New Jersey [Democrat Party] politics”.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie Has Democrats Rattled

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has prosecuted more than 100 public corruption cases in New Jersey since becoming U.S. attorney in 2002, and he hasn't lost a single one.

Christie is handing out subpoenas to find out who benefited [from $378 million in Christmas Tree Grants]. As a result, the rumor mill is abuzz that the FBI wired a legislator, and as many as 15 "public servants" may go down.

The folks at Blue Jersey are becoming concerned and developing conspiracy theories:

Chris Christie may be the most honest US Attorney in history, but he is also a powerful Republican partisan who is beholden to a powerfully partisan Bush White House for his job while others in the same position are losing theirs.

The subpoenas for the legislature came right while the Democrats were making noises about passing major tax reform and corruption reform legislation, blunting the political gain to be made.

We've got a US Attorney, Chris Christie, and he has not been fired.

Eighty-seven others, including Christie, have not been “fired”. But, seven Bush appointees being replaced by seven Bush appointees and its time for congressional Democrats to issue subpoenas. As the Blue Jersey blogger writes:

Ooooh! Congressional subpoenas of the Bush admin on firing US Attorneys. What fun!

U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. You may recall that when President Bill Clinton took office one of the first things he did was to fire every U.S. Attorney - except one, Michael Chertoff, then U.S Attorney for the District of New Jersey - saved by Senator Bill Bradley. Clinton’s mass firing of 93 U.S. Attorneys was unprecedented, but within the President’s authority.

It’s within Christie’s authority to investigate and prosecute corrupt politicians. Do the folks at Blue Jersey think he should demure so as not to “blunt” Democrat political gains from making election year “tax and corruption reform noises”?

So far Chris Christie’s political indictment to conviction batting average is 1.000. It looks like this hard hitting U.S. Attorney has Democrats rattled and resorting to the old standby - blame the “powerfully partisan” President Bush - this time for corrupt NJ politicians from the Democratic Party.