The Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran wrote a column yesterday about “immigration reform” and Senator Bob Menendez, a member of the gang of 12 who negotiated the failed “grand bargain” in the U.S. Senate.

The column is remarkable for the level of Moran’s mendacity, beginning with this whopper. Moran writes that Menendez is “himself an immigrant from Cuba”. In fact, the only migration Menendez experienced was from his birthplace in New York to New Jersey, where he has lived most of his life, save for his time spent in Washington D.C.

Painting Menendez as some sort of victim is central to the media’s narrative about the man, which Moran uses to set up the remainder of his piece.

Moran laughably tells his readers that Menendez “is a liberal Democrat, but one who likes to strike deals with Republicans to get things done.” No examples where given to back up this preposterous claim. Probably because anyone remotely familiar with the perennial backbencher knows that Menendez’s idea of a deal is of the “heads I win, tails you lose” variety. So it was with his tactics on the immigration bill. "Do we want to see principle in our public servants?" Menendez asks. "Or do we want them to equivocate for the sake of bipartisanship?"

At its core, the compromise he pushed would toughen border security while allowing the 12 million illegal immigrants already within our borders to earn citizenship. Polls show most American support the idea.

Of course polls show no such thing, which is one of the reasons, the so-called compromise failed. The American people were against it, especially those provisions favored by Menendez.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters would favor an approach that focuses “exclusively on securing the border and reducing illegal immigration.” Support for the enforcement only approach comes from 84% of Republicans, 55% of Democrats, and 69% of those not affiliated with either major party.

Moran tries to lead his readers to falsely believe, “penalties and fees for illegals seeking citizenship, a petty move that would inevitably discourage some from applying”, were a part of a deal breaking amendment. They weren’t. The “petty fines and fees” were a central part of the original Senate bill and the fig leaf used by proponents to pretend illegal aliens would not be receiving amenity.

Moran writes, “But now, Menendez says he would not vote for this bill unless it is fundamentally changed.”

His biggest objection is aimed at a provision that would emphasize job skills over family relationships in awarding visas.

That was another key provision in the original Senate bill that Menendez supposedly helped to negotiate, along with the misguided “huge guest worker program”. Menendez objects to the plan because it wouldn’t lead to permanent legal residency for “guest workers” and additional chain-migration for their family members. It was Menendez who tried to change it with an amendment.

Moran explains that “On a personal level, Menendez sounds deflated by the experience”.

"What surprised me was the vehemence of some of the language," he says. "I heard, 'those people.' When I hear that, it just sends a shiver up my spine."

He was referring to Arizona Sen. John Kyl, a Republican, who used the phrase on the Senate floor last week to describe the illegal immigrant population.

The Congressional Record tells a different story about the exchange between Menendez and Jon Kyl, the chief Republican proponent of the “grand bargain” of a bill that was to bear the Republican’s name along with Democrat Ted Kennedy. The “shiver up my spine” exchange Moran refers to is on page S7136 of the Congressional Record of June 6, 2007:

Mr. KYL: It was not easy for some people to agree to allow at least 12 million immigrants who came to this country illegally to stay here and eventually become citizens. That was not easy. One of the bases upon which we were able to do that was to respond to an argument that had frequently been made: Why should we let all those people, is the way it is described, become U.S. citizens and then chain migrate all their family—their uncles, cousins, grandparents, and so on?

Mr. MENENDEZ: One point. Remember how the Senator from Arizona said how all ‘‘those people’’ would be able to claim their families. The Menendez amendment has nothing to do with ‘‘those people.’’ The Menendez amendment has everything to do with U.S. citizens today who have a right under the law. So I hope we do not confuse both of those.

Mr. KYL: Mr. President, I say to the Senator from New Jersey that what he said, as far as he said it, is, of course, exactly correct. What I was talking about was the tradeoff that existed between the accommodation to the 12 million people and--by the way, I don't use that phrase ``those people .'' I hope the Senator understands that I was referring to the criticism of those who say we shouldn't allow the illegal immigrants in the country, especially if we chain migrate their families.

There are those people who check the facts and then, there are those people who don’t. Some people try to enlighten, others try to intentionally mislead. Moran seems to be one of those people following into the latter of both camps.

But, Moran did get one thing right about Menendez. “He is far more permissive than most when it comes to immigration.” New Jersey’s senior Senator, Bob Menendez has a voting record to back up the claim. We checked the facts.

"There's a great deal of ignorance out there." Someone should tell Paul Mulshine a good bit of it comes from his newspaper. May his and Moran’s brand of journalism R.I.P.

Tom Moran lobs a bomb:

Republicans tend to get defensive when they are accused of favoring the rich over the poor. That's class warfare, we are told. And it's just not American.

Which makes it difficult to be polite while discussing the latest Republican moves on the state budget. Because the GOP plan is crowded with efforts to take money from poor cities and shift it to wealthier suburbs.

Look at the facts.

Yes, let us look at the facts, beginning with Moran's premise that Republicans want to “take money from poor cities and shift it to wealthier suburbs.”

There is no Republican plan to tax poor people and transfer the proceeds to the wealthy. There is no plan to take money from “poor cities” and shift it to wealthier suburbs. Money is taken from taxpayers and shifted to tax receivers. Under the Republican plan, “poor cites” would still receive more funding than last year, just not as much as Democrats would like.

Here’s the list of budget cuts proposed by Republicans. These cuts take into accout programs that have not produced results and the billions of taxpayer dollars “poor cites” have wasted through financial mismanagement and outright fraud.

The Republican plan is to implement spending controls and invest, as Democrats like to say, a tiny fraction of the budget in the state’s neglected suburbs to help limit the growth in property taxes.

And this may come as a shock to Moran, but not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a Wall Street tycoon, just as everyone one who lives in a city is not a pauper. Hoboken, a “poor city”, where Jon Corzine, Carla Katz and Bob Menendez hang their hat from time to time immediately comes to mind.

Times have changed - 13 Abbott school cities no longer meet the criteria established for the Abbott designation, but continue to receive huge state subsidies.

The class warrior, Moran, continues:

It would drastically cut state aid to urban schools, forcing major layoffs in the state's poorest districts.

Most of that money would be redirected to growing suburban schools on a per-student basis, with no regard to the district's level of wealth.

Republicans are proposing a more equitable allocation of education aid to all school districts. The 31 Abbott towns have been spending without regard to state taxpayers and the children in New Jersey’s other 535 municipalities.

It’s no exaggeration to say Abbott school spending is completely out of control with Asbury Park spending $23,572 per student and the state’s largest school district, Newark, $21,503. Most of that Abbott funding comes from the state’s income taxpayers unlike the funding for New Jersey’s non-Abbott school districts which spend an average of $11,056 per student.

The so-called “poor Abbott school districts” spend far more per pupil than the state’s wealthy school districts and have been doing so since 1997. To quote what Corzine administration officials told the New Jersey Supreme Court:

Abbott districts have been spending at some of the highest levels in the State, and well beyond non-Abbott districts, with no discernable correlation to improved achievement.

Of the 25 highest spending K-12 districts, 17 are Abbott districts. Moreover, the three highest spending K-12 districts in the State are Abbott districts.

The Abbott districts have not been required to exercise the fiscal discipline that the State and other school districts must undergo; instead they have been allowed to balance their budget through virtually unlimited supplemental funding requests.

As for forcing major layoffs in the state's “poorest school districts”, it’s good to see Moran understands where the bulk of all that extra funding has been spent – on superfluous jobs that have contributed nothing to student achievement.

Moran soldiers on:

It would kill a big tax cut proposed by Gov. Jon Corzine for the working poor.

So why is this the only tax cut in the world that Republicans in Trenton now oppose? Could it be because it is aimed exclusively at working families earning less than $38,000 a year, who tend to favor Democrats?

Republicans oppose the measure because it isn’t a tax cut. Corzine’s plan would provide a refundable tax credit, meaning that qualifying tax filers would receive a refund check greater than the amount of state income tax they paid. It would reduce the “property tax relief fund” by $64 million.

It’s one thing to eliminate state income taxes for those earning less than $38,000 and quite another to provide people with a subsidy from the state’s school aid fund. It’s not a tax cut, it’s a grant.

Moran fights any defense of taxpayers:

The political calculus behind this is pretty simple. Republicans are giving up on winning elections in the cities -- which makes tactical sense, since they don't have much of a prayer in that fight anyway.

They are going for the swing districts in the suburbs. Places like Monmouth County, where Democratic Sen. Ellen Karcher faces a tough re-election fight, and Gloucester County, where Democratic Sen. Steve Sweeney is a target.

How about we just say Republicans are going after the vote of taxpayers regardless of where they live. It’s about time.

Moran goes for the kill:

So which side, in the end, is really waging class warfare?

Democrats and their tax receiving backers comprising all economic classes, that’s who. It is Democrats who have made war on the taxpaying class - raiding their incomes, savings and property. The people who pay the bills in this state are sick and tied of being portrayed as the bad guys while being treated like an ATM account with an unlimited balance.

Putting the brakes on wasteful state spending isn’t class warfare it’s called good government. Pretending the poor in New Jersey are somehow being shortchanged by taxpayers is demagoguery.

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.

Enlightened Dynamo Or An Electric Opportunist?

Ralph Izzo is president of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) and a former staffer of Sen. Bill Bradley and Gov. Tom Kean. So he knows his way around politics and the media.

According to the Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran, Izzo is the energy industry's enlightened dynamo because he wants to reduce reliance on coal by making it much more expensive to burn. Fifty percent of the electricity in the U.S. is generated by coal so we’re talking about big bucks and major economic repercussions if his idea was adopted.

"Ralph Izzo is a visionary," says Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a major green lobby in Washington. "He's really willing to buck the system. I think that's huge, politically."

Is Izzo a visionary or just a politically savvy guy exploiting the global warming craze and working the system for profit?

Izzo’s pushing for state regulators to approve utility price hikes to pay for lost business due to conservation. He’s announced a solar energy program*, that will generate more in positive company PR and ultimately dollars to PSEG’s bottom line, than electricity. He’s also proposing a plan that would jack up the cost American consumers pay for electricity, excluding the poor who would be subsidized by regular ratepayers, while improving his company’s advantage in the marketplace.

Izzo wants the federal government to cap emissions of greenhouse gases and require utilities to purchase credits at auction for any carbons they do emit. The proceeds could be used to fund research into alternative fuels and to help low-income households purchase the higher-cost power.

Izzo is a fan of nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gases.

The coal-burning utilities call Izzo's approach simple self-interest. PSEG relies so heavily on nuclear power that it would not pay as much.

We are also fans of nuclear power, but it certainly seems Izzo is more of an opportunist than an environmentalist. A new study appearing in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology notes:

No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States in 29 years, in part because they've proved to be poor investments, producing far more expensive electricity than originally promised. In 2005, about 19 percent of U.S. electricity generation was produced by 104 nuclear reactors.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Advanced Energy Initiative of 2006 sought to change that, offering financial incentives for new plant construction that employs new reactor and new safe-operating technologies. Current nuclear plant operators have given notice that they intend to apply for approval of 27 new "generation III+" reactors.

Those two major pieces of federal legislation not only promote nuclear energy but, cover all energy sources and uses. Plans for improving energy efficiency and conservation, the development and use of alternative and renewable energy, and the modernization of the country’s electricity grid were among the many initiatives advanced in the laws.

However, Tom Moran scoffs at these measures and points to actions by New Jersey lawmakers as momentous.

New Jersey, like California, is getting tired of watching the glaciers melt while the Bush administration does nothing to slow global warming.

This year, the Legislature is almost certain to approve a bill that requires deep cuts in emissions -- an 80 percent drop by 2050. The governor has already signed an executive order embracing the same goal.

Great goal, what’s the plan?

So far, though, no one has spelled out how that can be done. The bill would require that we fill in the details within a year. So the hard work lies ahead.

In other words, Trenton has produced nothing but hot air. These political gasbags won’t come up with the “details” before the next ice age, so can we skip the talk and start building some nuclear power plants. Make them safe and efficient Mr. Izzo and your competition will follow.

* PSEG solar energy program
PSEG will put up a $100 million for solar energy projects and earn a nice profit on this fairly complicated scheme. The plan calls for the company to provide loans to customers to cover as much as half the cost of a solar installation project, with the utility getting repaid, with interest, over 15 years. Customers would pay the remaining cost directly or through an equity partner, such as a bank or investor, that is eligible to collect the federal investment tax credit.

PSEG would also recoup its investment though the existing “societal-benefits charge” that all customers pay. In addition, the company will receive credits called solar renewable energy certificates, or SRECs, which have value in the energy marketplace. The plan calls for them to be valued at $475 for each megawatt generated, about 50 percent higher than SRECs that are included in a solar program run by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU).