Free Republic

"The numbers from the cartridges that print out vote tallies and the paper-tape backup didn't match..."

New Jersey has the most millionaire households in the country, according to a marketing company's fifth annual ranking. The Garden State moved up from No. 2 in 2005 and 2006 to No. 1 last year on the index, compiled by Phoenix Affluent Marketing Service, which does research for companies that sell luxury products, investments and the like to the wealthy. According to the service, in 2007, 7.12 percent of New Jersey's 3.2 million households had a total of $1 million or more liquid or investable assets. That includes items such as savings, stocks and bonds, precious metals, the cash value...

I received a notice yesterday from the State of New Jersey, Office of the Attorney General, Department of Law and Public Law and Safety, Division of Elections The letter said: Dear Voter: A review of the statewiud voter registration system indicates that your date of birth is missing from your registration record. Please be advised that a missing date of birth will not affect your right to vote. However, we need this missing information to assure that your records are correct and properly maintained. Please provide your date of birth on the line below and mail this letter back in...

While some New Jersey towns have worked to make life more difficult for illegal immigrants, Edison is considering a policy that would prevent its police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The Middlesex County township, whose population is one-third Asian, is mulling a written "no-coordination policy," prohibiting township police officers from informing federal authorities about an individual's immigration status, and from assisting or cooperating with federal immigration investigations.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — A powerful southern New Jersey politician was paid for a no-work job at a scandal-ridden state university while helping the school garner millions of dollars in new state funding, according to a report released Monday. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey paid state Sen. Wayne Bryant, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, $35,000 a year "to lobby himself in his capacity of state senator," according to the report of a federal monitor who had investigated the school's finances. The report said all Bryant appeared to do at the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine...

An early joke about New Jersey is attributed to Ben Franklin: "New Jersey is like a beer barrel, tapped at both ends, with all the live beer running into Philadelphia and New York." Maybe you had to be there. A contemporary joke is on display in Trenton where the majority Democratic legislature and Governor John "I promise not to raise your taxes" Corzine are in a fierce battle over the state budget, which last weekend led to a government shutdown reminiscent of the 1995-96 closings of the Federal government. A decade ago, it was a battle between a Republican Congress...

Interested in an aging sedan that was once part of the state of New Jersey's mighty fleet? Gov. Jon Corzine has a deal for you. Advertisement The Democratic governor, stressing belt-tightening in the midst of a state budget battle, kicked off a fire sale of 809 used cars he says will shrink the number of state passenger vehicles to 9,995. Corzine announced a series of Saturday summer auctions starting July 8 he hopes will bring in up to $1 million. He said the state will save another $1 million a year on fuel and maintenance costs by cutting its fleet...

TRENTON, N.J. -- Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy said he was arrested and roughed up by police over the weekend for intervening in an argument between a couple outside a Bradley Beach bar. Healy said he had just left Barry's Tavern _ owned by his sister, Kathleen Barry _ around 2 a.m. on Saturday when he saw a couple arguing in the parking lot of a nearby auto shop. He said the man was jumping on the hood of his girlfriend's car. After calmly talking the man down, Barry said, police arrived and began roughing up him and his wife....

In his first political firestorm since taking office in January, Gov. Jon S. Corzine said Wednesday that he provided $5,000 in bail money to a lobbyist accused of stalking a state assemblyman. "I reacted as a human being responding to someone in need," the multimillionaire Democrat said. "However, in light of my position as governor, I realize this was a mistake." Karen Golding, a government relations manager for insurance giant Prudential Financial, is accused of breaking into the government-issued car of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a Democrat, and of writing threatening letters and making threatening calls to Cryan and others. Authorities...

Budget advisers have suggested that Gov. Jon S. Corzine add sales tax to more items and raise the gasoline tax because the state’s finances are "perilously close to ruin.’’ In a six-page report submitted this month, the advisers urged the increased sales taxes, as well as immediate cost-cutting, including a freeze of state work force levels and "symbolic’’ pay cuts for all nonunion state workers, adding that layoff plans should be prepared. Advertisement Corzine called it an "interim report’’ and that no policy has been set. "We’re going to scrub the budget with absolute focus in the next few weeks...

Tales of the Jersey mob: Body behind diner a missing Mafiosi? Wedding Services Search By LARRY McSHANE Associated Press Writer December 1, 2005, 4:28 PM EST NEW YORK -- A mob trial, a missing defendant, a decomposing body and a car trunk. Don't cue "The Sopranos" theme for this real-life mob scenario, where a reputed Genovese family capo vanished during his waterfront corruption case only to turn up dead _ perhaps _ behind a New Jersey diner. The body found Wednesday in a parking lot behind the Huck Finn Diner in Union, N.J., was likely that of Lawrence Ricci, a...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Make us a slogan we can't refuse, the state of New Jersey said. We got your slogan right here, the people replied. A push to come up with a new slogan for the Garden State has become an excuse to crack New Jersey jokes. Among the not-so-serious entries: "New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?" "NJ: How You Doin'?!" "Most of Our Elected Officials Have Not Been Indicted." The search yielded more than 4,000 possibilities in all, many of them attempts to sum up the land of Bruce Springsteen, "The Sopranos" and smelly interstates in...

DEMOCRATS IN New Jersey have a big problem. Sure, Sen. Jon Corzine’s easy election as governor on Tuesday was their latest win in the increasingly blue state. But Corzine’s first decision when he takes office in January is a real doozy — appointing a Democrat to fill the last 11 months of his term and likely run for a full six-year term next November. But most of the obvious choices reek of political hackery, even by Jersey standards. U.S. Rep. Robert Menendez, most often mentioned, is weighed down by ties to machine politics. And the others — South Jersey U.S....

WASHINGTON (AP) — New Jersey Sen. Jon Corzine, a former Wall Street executive with a portfolio worth $261 million, has been giving some of his money to black churches, raising questions about whether it's generosity or politics. The Democrat, who is in a tight race for governor, donated or loaned more than $2.5 million last year to black churches. He has received the endorsement of more than two dozen black ministers.

As Corzine lead wilts, Clinton gets call WASHINGTON - Former President Bill Clinton is being called in to help rescue the slumping New Jersey gubernatorial campaign of Jon Corzine, who has given up a double-digit lead and is just 4 points ahead of Republican Doug Forrester in a new poll. "It's 911 time in the Corzine campaign. Obviously, he's in trouble," said a senior Democratic strategist. Clinton will campaign with the Democratic U.S. senator today at Kean University in Union, hoping to turn around Corzine's stalled run for the New Jersey statehouse. A Quinnipiac poll gives Corzine a 48%-to-44% lead...

August 8, 2005--In the race to be New Jersey's next Governor, Democrat Jon Corzine's lead has shrunk to single digits. Senator Corzine now leads Republican Doug Forrester by eight percentage points, 45% to 37%.In July, Corzine held a 12-point lead.  Since then, the Garden State Senator's support has dipped five percentage points, from 50% in July to 45% today. Forrester's numbers have held steady--38% last month, 37% now.It's interesting to note that both candidates have slightly less support in this poll than they did the night after they were nominated in a statewide primary. This is the opposite of a...

Elected officials have a right to keep their personal lives private. But there's something about New Jersey that seems to impel politicians to mix their love lives with the taxpayers' business. When former Gov. James McGreevey revealed he was gay, it was impossible to support him on that count without pointing out that a public official, no matter what his sexual orientation, does not have a right to appoint the object of his affection to a post as security adviser. Now we have Senator Jon Corzine, who is currently running for governor, and his affair with Carla Katz, the president...

MORRISTOWN, N.J. -- A retired Chatham police chief admitted trying to enlist a prostitute's help in opening a brothel, but was spared jail time under a plea deal with prosecutors. Thomas Ramsey, 55, of Mansfield, admitted Tuesday in state Superior Court that he proposed running a brothel and using a massage parlor as a front while speaking to a prostitute in a Mount Olive motel last year. During the conversation, Ramsey acknowledged, he encouraged the woman to continue working as a prostitute. The plan would have included a third person, and Ramsey would have used his law enforcement knowledge and...

A New Jersey state assemblyman has introduced a bill that would allow the government to seize the home or car of anyone whose property contains an illegal firearm. The legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Louis Manzo, D-Jersey City, authorizes the forfeiture of "motor vehicle, building or premise" if a firearm is found in it that is not possessed legally per state law – "even if the firearm was not possessed by the owner of the motor vehicle, building or premise," states a summary of the bill, A3998. The legislation was introduced Thursday. Manzo pointed out his bill extends government power now...

Did you ever think you would see the day when The Sopranos were the most morally upstanding citizens of New Jersey? Back when the investigation of Sen. Bob Torricelli — a Democrat, not that the national media mentioned this much — was at its peak, I was covering Washington for the Bergen Record. I collected a slew of comments and asked some political analysts and figures about the Garden state's reputation for corruption. "Torricelli is a survivor, and New Jersey voters seem to tolerate politicians with shaky ethical judgments," said Jack Torry, Washington correspondent for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, told...