Well Done, Keyport !!!!!

The recent elections have served up mixed reviews and I will leave the interpretation of those statewide results to others to somehow surmise for digestion.

However, here in Keyport we had our first election since the sentencing of our former mayor, John Merla (elected as a Republican) on the reduced (from the original 8) one count. If the results of the council race here in town is any indication, the town is ready/has moved on and rightly so.

In the hours prior to the results being known or tallied, I met John at the Keyport Republican outpost for election night and we shook hands, with the understanding that what is past is past, atonement by him with regard to his sentence to be carried out and once done, that we’ll take from there.

Democrat George Walling, was the big winner of the night, despite disarray in his own party about what measure of support he enjoyed from those who would seek to “control” every issue or discussion.

The fact that a Republican, John Kovacs, won and thus became the lone member of his party to be on the new 2008 council is a refreshing reminder that the 2-party system is alive.

Knowing both of these gentlemen, I believe the electorate sent a clear message that they want straight-shooting, open minded individuals who will really listen, who will respect those who might have a different view rather than attempt to brow beat or look down upon them.

These two gentlemen know how to check their egos at the door and they understand the concept that they do not have “power”, but rather responsibility. That the authority these positions supply is something that is best kept in the back pocket and used only when every good faith attempt at reaching consensus has been exhausted.

Well done, Keyport!!!

What Happened, Mr. Christie?- You Had So Much Promise

As I write this I note that it’s been 4 days since the sentence has been handed down for our former mayor, Mr. John Merla, 4 days that has allowed for, to quote Andrew Jackson, "the application of a calmer light and a milder philosophy" to this episode. Considerations have prompted the raising of certain questions that need to be addressed by the U.S. Attorney, Mr. Christopher Christie.

On the sentence given to Mr. Merla - 22 months in jail, a $20,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release upon completion of his prison sentence:

A)The jail sentence is approximately 1-½ months less than the time period that elapsed from the day of arrest and the final day of his term as mayor expired – throughout which Mr. Merla refused to cooperate and refused to resign as Mayor of Keyport.

B) The fine is $4,000 less than the total amount of bribes he admitted to taking.

U.S. Attorney Christie said in a statement after the sentences were handed down “We think the sentences are appropriate. The judge carefully balanced the need to punish public officials who took bribes with the need to recognize, as a mitigating factor, their particular levels of cooperation".

The U.S. Attorney should be ashamed of himself if he thinks is true.

He allowed the hard work and sacrifice of so many people – FBI agents, lawyers, residents and honest public officials – to be minimized by reducing the original 8 counts that were brought against Mr. Merla – all to which he admitted guilt to - to a single count and to somehow mask Mr. Merla’s stubborn refusal to cooperate in any meaningful fashion during anytime other than that of his (Mr. Merla’s) own choosing and even then, apparently giving up supposedly only confirmations of existing knowledge held by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

We need some answers from the U.S. Attorney as to why there was a reduction in the counts (and therefore the subsequent removal of the expanded available jail time and fines for the judge’s option to impose) from 8 to a mere 1.

Could the U.S. Attorney not prove the other 7 counts in a trial? Or was the cooperation by the former mayor actually much more than mere confirmation of existing knowledge and perhaps a bit more has been revealed by his former honor that will lead to the future indictments of others?

It would appear on the face of it, that all involved have been given short shift by the U.S. Attorney’s office in both the initial raised expectations from this office and the less than spectatcular explanations surrounding this entire event – from the initial arrest to the recent outcome – to satisfy the outstanding questions that remain.

Mr. Christie needs to clear up these questions so that we can all finally put this entire matter behind us.

On The Creation Of Fluff

I was recently included in a group to go (courtesy of my mother-in-law) to some recent tapings of the game show “Wheel of Fortune”, which was in NYC to celebrate it’s 25th year on the air.

The festivities were taking place at the historic Radio City Theater and we were told to arrive by 12 pm for the start of their 3 show taping, scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm.

Arrive we did, to one of 2 lines that stretched from 6th Ave to 5th Ave. on either side of the theater. Fortunately the people who were around us were pleasant and in a good mood for the wait. There was nearby seating that allowed for those of a “certain age” to leave the line and made those of us who remained to be line holders.

I soon found out that I was a novice compared to some of those who stayed on line with me.

Scattered up and down the lines were representatives of the show who were there to answer questions and to start the process of getting us in the “good audience” mind-set. We were told how lucky we were, in that these were to be “celebrity” show tapings – with celebrities that, for the most part, I had never heard of.

Some on the line began to share their previous experiences on the “show taping” orbit of life. A lady next to me told of how she had planned her outfit so as to be highly noticeable on TV – she went with day-glow lime & pink on a basic black foundation. A gentleman behind me shared his “Jeopardy” in NYC adventure with all of us, allowing us to know how he actually talked to Alex Trebek, and did we know that Alex was Canadian.

Thankfully, the line began to move and in we went.

As we went through the doors a gentleman from the show stopped the line at our point and counted out 42 people and marched our group up to the left side front of the stage. We felt soooooooooo lucky – until we sat down and realized that we were behind the camera and a desk that were on the stage. We could see the contestants, the wheel & Pat Sajak, but not Vanna. The only time we saw her was when they walked out at the beginning of the show and during the breaks. Thankfully we had a wide screen TV to see all the “action” on the wall to our left.

What truly amazed me about all of this is, given all the breaks, how little of an actual show there is. No sooner did it feel like the show was running smoothly then they were saying goodbye.

We made the decision that after taking 1 hour and 10 minutes to tape a thirty-minute program, our time would be better spent doing anything else and we left.

I know Vanna was crushed by this and that Pat’s ego may have taken a hit, but really – these two work 45 days a year – my hands were hurting from all the clapping and the woman sitting in front of us was getting on my nerves by regaling us with stories of her other career (by day she is a 3rd grade teacher in NJ) as a seat filler and who she has met over the years.

I’ll never go to one of these again.

Rove is leaving? I have a bridge you might want...

Spare me the choked up goodbye, the subsequent initial feint at trying to frame the legacy that officially begins on January 20, 2008 or the glossy retelling of the old days.

Somehow the term “genius” being applied to Mr. Rove and his tactics that resulted in 2 terms of a failed administration seems misplaced, even downright insulting, to many of the voters in those elections.

His use of gutter tactics and polarization reached new lows – even by comparison to the ways and means employed by such people as Richard Nixon and his crew. Just ask Ann Richards (phone question used -“Would you vote for Ann Richards if you found out that most of her females staffers are lesbians?”- not that anyone knew if they were or not) when Bush ran for governor of Texas or John McCain, during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.

He is not going anywhere that doesn’t have a phone, that doesn’t have access to his RNC email account, that can’t be contacted by those in need of his “wisdom”.

He is going to a place that will be even further out of the spotlight on an everyday basis, where his appearances will be in an even more controlled setting than they were in the White House. He’ll be on the dinner speaker circuit, making tens (if not initially, hundreds) of thousands of dollars for 20 to 30 minute speeches, during which he will be laying out the ground plan for the 2008 election to the faithful.

The importance of his words will be enhanced mightily if the Democratic nominee is Hillary – make no mistake about that. If there were one person that can galvanize the Republicans to overlook any differences they might have with one another, it would be the candidacy of Hillary. Enter Fred, Rudy or Mitt and their running mates (a running mate chosen to accommodate and placate those within the party that might not normally support the ticket’s top spot holder).

Rove will – through Bush, his pulpit in the White House and his veto power – orchestrate facts, imagery and legislative agendas to whatever advantage for the Republican nominee – while being out of sight and out of mind.

Dick Cheney will be envious.

Here's Hoping Our Leaders Will Be Dogged In August

So, here we are, in both NJ and the country, in debt up to our eyeballs, with repeated reminders that our infrastructure is, in some regards, falling or ready to, fall apart. Bridges, roadways, power grids, water/sewer systems.

We are reminded daily of the drain of our strength, both human and financial, in Iraq. Add to these reminders our dependence on foreign oil and it’s fluctuating price at the pump and our dependence on foreign money to finance our self imposed debt.

A glut in the housing market and fewer starts, credit/mortgage problems that threaten hundreds of thousands of families with the loss of their newly acquired homes, A Wall St. that is both Jekell and Hyde – new plateaus reached and then quickly abandoned as fears suddenly set-in.

Horrific displays of the underbelly of human behavior – both domestic and foreign – splash across our media everyday.

An immigration policy that is broken, the export of good paying jobs to cheaper markets, the importing of tainted goods from many of those same markets.

Corrupted politicians being caught and, in some instances, only being slapped on the wrists for their crimes or in the case of the former druggy D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, being enshrined in wax.

So what do our leaders do for all of this?

They give tax breaks to those who don’t need them, give out tax rebates checks just in time for the elections (the monies from which were gotten from taxes to begin with), worry about whether we need a front license plate on our car or not, beat the dead horse path of what you cannot do while driving – talk/text on a cell phone, smoke with a child in a car (when does childhood begin anyway?) – to the point that in five years, you better not be seen picking your nose.

With August here, our Congress, our President, our Supreme Court, our State legislature have taken a cue from the Iraqi government and have gone on a formal vacation, one that is traceable on a calendar versus that of a vacation from their senses or, mind you, any type of display of their convictions.

Hmm, here in NJ, it may take a different descriptor that the use of the word “convictions”. What a shame.

WTO: "Stabbing Weapons need not be put out to bid"

Made in China: Swiss army knife suffers an identity crisis

Kate Connolly in Berlin
Friday August 3, 2007
The Guardian

It is as closely associated with Switzerland as the Matterhorn, muesli and the cuckoo clock. But the Swiss army knife, considered by millions around the world to be an indispensable tool, is in danger of losing its Swiss identity.

The Swiss army, which is to order a fresh batch of 65,000 of the pocket knives with new specifications, has caused nationwide consternation by declaring that under World Trade Organisation rules, the tendering process must be opened to companies worldwide because of the high value of the contract.

China, which has been producing pirate copies of the knife for years, is thought to have the best chance of winning the contract, which is estimated at 1.7m Swiss francs (£695,000), followed by Taiwan and Bulgaria.

The issue has become one of the hottest political topics of the summer, with far-right politicians saying that national pride is at stake.

"If the Swiss army knife no longer comes from Switzerland, then we might as well stop producing it altogether," said Thomas Fuchs, MP for the far-right Swiss People's party.

Alois Kessler, a lawyer and a former colonel in the Swiss army, has taken up the campaign and launched a nationwide petition, Keep Soldiers' Pocket Knives Swiss!
He said he had found that under WTO rules "stabbing weapons" - among them the Swiss army knife - are on a list of products that do not need to be put out to tender (bid).

"I simply cannot imagine our soldiers carrying a Made in China knife in their knapsacks," he said.

"It would be like us giving them German-made chocolate."

The army is saying little, except that it is working on the technical specifications for the new product to make it suitable for modern soldiering, including a serrated blade with a locking mechanism, a saw, and a Phillips - crosshead - screwdriver. It should also have a case, allowing it to be attached to a belt.

Victorinox, the company that makes the knives, said it was confident it would win the bid on the combined factors of quality and cost.

The knife, which was first produced in Ibach in the canton of Schwyz in 1897, can be equipped with anything from a nail file and a tin opener to a fish-scaler and a USB stick, and features in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

It is credited by everyone from balloonists and astronauts to surgeons and pilots with saving lives and is the official pocket knife for 16 armies around the world, including the US military.

It has also prompted many jokes, perceived as it is as the weapon of choice for the military of neutral Switzerland. The US comedian Robin Williams once quipped: "How can you trust an army that has a wine opener on its knife?"

(Hmmm, how soon until Chinese Swiss cheese, eh?)

Who Is Norma Gabler And Why Should We Care

If you ever used a textbook in a school, especially a public school you were influenced by Norma and her husband Mel.

From The NY Times:

Norma Gabler, Leader of Crusade on Textbooks, Dies at 84
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: August 1, 2007

Norma Gabler, a Texas homemaker who recoiled at material in her children’s textbooks and became the public face of a crusade with her husband to rid schoolbooks of content they considered antifamily, anti-American and anti-God, died on July 22 in Phoenix. She was 84.

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, her son James said.

From its origins at the Gablers’ kitchen table in Hawkins, Tex., in 1961 to its incorporation as Educational Research Analysts in 1973, the mom-and-pop textbook-criticism enterprise grew to occupy a prominent niche in the nation’s conservative pantheon. For more than four decades, the couple influenced what children read, not just in Texas but around the country.

The reason was Texas’ power to be a national template; the state board chooses textbooks for the entire state, and of the 20 or so states that choose books statewide, only California is bigger than Texas. It is difficult and costly for publishers to put out multiple editions, so a book rejected by Texas might not be printed at all.

In a 1982 article in The New York Times, Anthony T. Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, a liberal group, said, “Texas has the buying power to influence the development of teaching materials nationwide, and a textbook edition chosen for Texas often becomes the sole edition available.”

The Gablers were first to seize on the Texas textbook process as a means of pushing their conservative principles, and their success baffled and angered civil liberties advocates and progressive educators. Publishers, with much to lose if Texas rejected their books, were often willing to make changes to please the Gablers.

Richard Morgan, president of Macmillan’s school division, said in a 1983 interview with The Times, “Not making the list in Texas is not a good sign.”

Mrs. Gabler, always with a smile and careful, precise diction, usually testified at textbook hearings rather than her shyer husband, Mel. She argued for more instruction in morality, free-enterprise economics, phonetics and weaknesses in evolutionary theory.

The Gablers had a two-barreled strategy: in addition to pressing issues of ideology, interpretation and philosophy, the Gablers ferreted out errors of fact. In 2001, Time magazine reported that their “scroll of shame” of textbook mistakes since 1961 was 54 feet long. In the early 1990s, Texas fined publishers about $1 million for failing to remove hundreds of factual errors the Gablers had found in 11 history books.

An example: A textbook said that Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had supported the tariff of 1816. He opposed it.

But the Gablers’ most important battles concerned bigger issues, like making publishers define marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman.

The couple’s interest in textbooks began when James, at 14, had to memorize the Gettysburg Address and turned to an encyclopedia, he said in an interview. The words “under God,” part of the address, were shown in a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, but were omitted in the text as published. His parents blanched.

Soon, the couple were poring over textbooks, something they said few parents ever did, and finding lots to offend. They raised objections at the local P.T.A.
Why did a history textbook give more space to the French Revolution than to the American Revolution? Were not Vietnam and Watergate overemphasized? Was Robin Hood a hero, as the text claimed, or a dangerous advocate of income redistribution?

From the kitchen in Hawkins, about 100 miles east of Dallas, their piles and piles of books and notes spread throughout their house. They worked by what they called the three p’s — prayer, preparation and persistence — as they geared up for their once-a-year trips to Austin, the state capital, to ride herd on textbooks.

There, each academic subject — English, say — is reviewed on an eight-year cycle in a system established a century ago to create an organized buying system to negotiate lower prices. It was also intended to improve the quality of books used in rural areas.

Norma Elizabeth Rhodes was born in Garrett, Tex., on June 16, 1923. She did not go to college. Her husband of 62 years, Melvin Nolan Freeman Gabler, went for a year. He worked in the oilfields, served in the Air Force during World War II, was a clerk for 39 years for Esso, now part of Exxon-Mobil, and died in 2004.

In addition to James, who lives in Phoenix, Mrs. Gabler is survived by another son, Paul, of Houston, and six grandchildren.

Neal Frey, who has worked with Educational Research Analysts since 1972 and is now president, said that Mrs. Gabler’s larger public role was deceptive.

“Mr. Gabler wore the pants in that family, and Mrs. Gabler wanted it that way,” he said in an interview.
Together, they were “the most effective textbook censors in the country,” Creation/Evolution, a publication of the National Center for Science Education, said in 1982. It went on to point out that while the Gablers derided textbooks that left out alternatives to evolution, they opposed alternative interpretations of American history they deemed negative. They objected to an Edgar Allan Poe story as gruesome. Texts that raised questions without firm answers were suspect.

Famously, in 1973, they flinched at a fifth-grade American history text that devoted more attention to Marilyn Monroe than to George Washington.

“We’re not quite ready for Marilyn Monroe as the mother of our country,” Mrs. Gabler said.