Blackwater gets away with murder

Why am I not surprised by this? Blackwater five gets off in Baghdad shooting. Just great.

Dispatches: A question of priorities

Dispatches is available -- wondering what Chris Christie's priorities are going to be.

Empowering the grassroots

This is an interesting proposal, long overdue and in keeping with the democratic reforms made by the party in its candidate selection process over the years. The superdelegates have been defended as a way of resolving close races, but they really are nothing more than a hedge for the party insiders to ensure that the party's grassroots cannot take over the process.

The fear is that the Democrats could have a repeat of the 1972 primaries, the first in which the primaries actually mattered, and nominate a new George McGovern. That fear, of course, is overblown and ignores the historical record -- as I wrote in 2004 and David Sirota wrote in his book Uprising. Nixon won that election for a lot of reasons, but not because McGovern was some kind of crazed lefty. He won because he was an incumbent that ran a smart race against a fractured Democratic Party and a candidate that made more than his share of mistakes. The Democratic establishment was as much to blame for what happened as the McGovern campaign.

The Democrats, as the 2008 election showed, are at their strongest when the grassroots is empowered and engaged. Altering the rules makes sense for the party.

The year in music 2009, A to Z

Once again, I offer my review of the year in music, alphabetically:

• A: Art Brut releases a great third disc (Art Brut v. Satan); Arctic Monkeys misfire a bit (with Humbug).


• B: Another Beatles resurgence – as if they ever went away- driven by Rock Band and the release of the American version of their catalogue.


• C: Elvis Costello goes folk/country on his latest (Secret, Profane and Sugarcane) and turns talk-show host for the cooler-than-cool "Spectacle."


• D: Disappointment, as in “Bruce Springsteen releases a disappointing disc” – and so do Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Jay-Z, the Monsters of Folk, Weezer, the Flaming Lips among the many.


• E: Easy listening tops the charts (Susan Boyle?!?!?) – and nauseates me in the process.


• F: Franz Ferdinand has an excellent disco adventure on Tonight.


• G: Girl power – Ida Maria and the Screaming Females (from New Brunswick) were among the female punkers and hardrockers to issue outstanding discs.


• H: The Heavy’s The House that Dirt Built, is edgy, fuzz-drenched and, well, heavy.


• I: “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black-Eyed Peas ranks as one of their best singles – even if the use of “Mazel tov” seems, well, a bit odd.


• J: David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain lead a reconstituted New York Dolls through a continued resurgence with Cause I Said So.


• K: Kings of Leon’s Only By the Night is better than its hype, even if Art Brut has a little fun during their shows at the band’s expense. (The disc came out in 2008, but bumrushed the charts in 2009.)


• L: Lily Allen’s It’s Not Me, It’s You is one of the best things to cross the Atlantic.


• M: The Millers, Buddy and Judy, put out the year’s best county disc, Written in Chalk.


• N: Nellie McKay shows off her infatuation with Doris Day on Normal as Blueberry Pie.


• O: Offspring – as in Roseanne Cash (great disc of covers, The List), Justin Townes Earle and Dhani Harrison (Thenewno2).


• P: P!nk releases the best divorce album (Funhouse) since Springsteen’s Brilliant Disguise (another 2008 disc that got most of its play in 2009).


• Q: Alicia Keys proves she’s the queen of modern R&B – apologies to Mary J. Blige – with another fabulous disc (The Element of Freedom), perhaps her most consistent.


• R: Rihanna surprises with an album (Rated R) of depth and emotion, nothing like the light weight dance/pop she’s known for.


• S: Michael Franti and Spearhead release All Rebel Rockers, among the best albums of the year.


• T: 21st Century Breakdown proves that Green Day’s expansive view of pop-punk first demonstrated on American Idiot (one of the decade’s best) was no fluke.


• U: U2’s No Line on the Horizon is better than its predecessor, the exceptional How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.


• V: Townes Van Zandt returns with Steve Earle’s impressive reinterpretation of his catalogue, Townes.


• W: What was Bob Dylan thinking? A Christmas disc? With strings and a choir? In all seriousness? At least it was for charity.


• X: Ex-members of Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar – Tweedy (Wilco’s Wilco (The Album)) puts out maybe the best album of the year, while Farrar (Son Volt’s American Central Dust) easily makes the top 10.


• Y: Yeah Yeah Yeahs join Franz Ferdinand on the disco dance floor to great results on It’s Blitz!


• Z: The soundtrack to the History Channel’s program, “The People Speak,” a dramatization of Howard Zinn’s important “A People’s History of the United States,” is political and poetic and powerful.

Out of the bubble

I've spent the last few days in a self-imposed bubble, taking advantage of some days off to work on some poetry, watch some movies (I recommend Syriana, which I watched on DVR today, and Sherlock Holmes, which is a real thrill ride -- though Holmes purists might disagree), and play with the dogs.

I also have studiously avoided the news because too much of it is focused on year-end wrap ups that do little more than regurgitate stories that we've read before.

I'll hit the blog with some thoughts tomorrow -- my annual musical wrap (what was it I was saying?), some thoughts on health care and more.

Right now, however, I'm going to bed.

Time for Senate reform

This piece by Ezra Klein is spot on -- and very eloquently says what I've been saying for a half dozen years: Reform the Senate.

Loose lips and hyperbole

I missed this story on Thursday, but it is worth posting today because it shows the dangers the healthcare reform bill poses in its current form.

If, as the Times reports, the impact will be limited, leaving the vast majority of people to deal with an only modestly changed market:

Now that the Senate has caught up with the House by passing a sweeping health care bill, lawmakers are on the verge of extending coverage to the tens of millions of Americans who have no health insurance.

But what about the roughly 160 million workers and their dependents who already have health insurance through an employer? For many people, the result of the long, angry health care debate in Washington may be little more than more of the same.

As President Obama once promised, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.”

That may be true even if you don’t like your health plan. And no one seems to agree on whether the legislation will do much to reduce workers’ continually rising out-of-pocket costs.

Again, I am not arguing that the bill should be killed -- I remain ambivalent, convinced that a better bill could have been crafted had progressive Senators and the president stood up to Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and the moderates and stopped reifying them, but also concerned with the political damage defeating the bill could cause.

What I think needs to happen is that bill supporters need to be honest. Stop painting the bill with such overheated language and just tell the public what it likely will do and how that is good for all. There is too great a danger that the hyperbole will backfire, that the millions who are unaffected by reforms, who find themselves at the mercy of the industry, will turn their back or worse -- buy into the BS arguments coming from the GOP.

Long pacts could mean long regrets

Omar Minaya should read this story before lengthening his rumored four-year offer to Jason Bay or two-year to Bengie Molina. Both are good players who may not pay off for that long -- Bay is a not particularly athletic outfielder who strikes out a lot and was in the midst of an extended stretch of mediocrity with Pittsburgh before being traded to Boston last year.

(By the way, I predicted the Soriano deal would prove a bad one longterm for Chicago back in 2006 right after it was inked. Do I get points for that?)

Head fake on health care

The health insurance reform plan approved by the Senate the other day can best be likened to a misdirection play in football, where all the action seems to be going in one direction while the real play is heading in another. In this case, we a plan being called "once-in-a-generation reform" -- a bit of overstatement, really -- when what we have is relatively modest insurance reform that expands coverage by mandating consumers buy plans from an a cartel-like industry that holds all the cards.

The misdirection here is the opportunity the bill gives the White House and the Democrats to claim a victory even if it is rather hollow -- no public option (let alone any thought of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach) to create competition to keep costs down, no expansion of Medicare, no changed incentives, no alternatives for businesses stretched to their limits, but millions of new customers for the insurance companies.

So, is it worth passing? That's a difficult question. There are good things in this bill and there is the possibility that it can be used as a foundation on which to build real reform. The problem is the discourse surrounding the bill. If it were being described by the press and the president as what it is -- something short of reform -- that would be OK. But it's not. It is being described as once-in-a-generation reform and that creates the danger that this bill has become a once-in-a-generation chance to fix our broken system. If the House cannot fix it, cannot toughen this bill up, progressives need to walk away from it.

The ugliness of high school sports

I played a year of football in high school and I can remember an incident after a game at New Brunswick in which fans of the hometeam got a bit unruly after the game, making for a tense situation and a great deal of fear. The team was on the bus when the fans acted up -- I think we probably won that game, but our main running back was hurt badly and there were probably some words during the contest.

The fans rocked the bus some, and it was just an ugly and potentially dangerous moment.

I was reminded of this because of a story we reported in The Cranbury Press this week about a melee at a Colonia basketball game after Monroe staged a furious comeback to win. The Colonia fans assaulted Monroe's fans, sending on to the hospital -- a fact that should have administrators at all high schools concerned.

The fight took place on Dec. 18, a week ago, but got little press until we reported on it. Then, on Tuesday, a fight broke out in Allentown after a game, demonstrating that there is something very wrong with American society.

Look, the New Brunswick incident, which took place in 1978, shows that this kind of behavior is nothing new. But the fights at the high schools are part of a larger trend that includes brutality at youth league games, professional contests (fans taunting and players going into the stands) that is starting to make our sports culture resemble South American soccer.

Monroe Coach Bob Turco put the entire thing in perspective, calling it a "sign of the times."

He used a Monroe student as an example, saying the girl had told him she wouldn’t wear her Monroe colors or jacket to away games for fear of retaliation from opposing fans.

"The sad part is this has become something to expect,” he said. “It used to be about school spirit and supporting your team.”

Sadly, it no longer is.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie New toys for Christmas

I hope we're not pushing things, but Rosie and Sohie are chewing on their new toys next to each other. This has been a recipe for disaster in the past, which is why we've only allowed supervised play and only rarely. But it is Christmas and they have been bored. And so far, they're doing OK.

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Too loud to be proud

This is absurd -- and makes me a little queasy. New Jersey has enough problems, most of them self-induced, but do we really need the stereotype proven on national television by shows of dubious quality? Do we?

Dispatches: Extension act a bad bargain

Here's my Dispatches column on the Permit Extension Act -- redux.

A worldwide blame game

Apparently, the failure of the Copenhagen talks on climate change are no one's fault. Or everyone's. Or, more accurately, everyone else's.

Money where your mouth is

I want to go back to something that former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman said early in her first term. Budgets, she said, are where politicians prove their priorities, where they back up their talk with cash.

The history of Trenton, of course, is that politics has been the priority, with legislators of both parties larding on the spending and using an array of gimmicks to both win votes and avoid angering the natives. Cut the income tax, as Whitman did, but pay for it with fancy accounting tricks. Sell state roads to the Turnpike, as Florio did. Borrow, borrow, borrow, as McGreevey did.

Chris Christie, who replaces Gov. Jon Corzine next month, is promising not to play these games. Like Corzine, he is promising to return the state's finances to a level of sanity that no one can actually remember. Corzine -- as I think history will show -- did some good, even if his tenure in office ultimately has to be viewed as a failure.

Christie has laid the gauntlet down, ordering severe cuts in state spending targeted toward eliminating programs that do not meet the mission of individual departments and consolidating duplicated services. This comes from a memo obtained by The Star-Ledger and shows that, just maybe, the new governor plans to play hardball.

The question, of course, is what he views as necessary programs. When Whitman was governor, she slashed the budget of the Department of Environmental Protection and eliminated the public advocate -- moves that saved some money but made it far too easy for the business community to escape scrutiny.

She balanced the budget and cut the state income tax rate, but left the state in a far worse position than when she took office as future governors were left to rebuild the regulatory apparatus and plug the massive hole she blew in the state's pension accounts.

Christie may succeed in slashing state spending, but how and who will pay the price? Will it be towns or schools in the form of state aid? Or the state's healthcare or prescription assistance programs? Or the DEP? Or the arts community? Some of these groups already are hurting, thanks to Corzine's budget cutting, and can only be further damaged by additional cuts.

It is not just about cutting spending. It is about priorities. Christie didn't outline those for us during his campaign -- even as he sung the zero-based budgeting song. (What is the Ledger talking about, by the way, in this story? How does this memo tie back to the zero-based nonsense all politicians spout?) He has until his first budget address to do so. Let's hope his priorities are the same as the bulk of the state's residents.

Environmental giveaways

Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club offers a pretty sharp -- and warranted -- attack on a couple of bills that essentially are nothing more than Christmas presents to the building community. Read it here.

(My Dispatches column, which should be up later today, is on one of the bills -- the Permit Extension Act Part II.)

Grassroots: Climate security

My Progressive Populist column is available here, on climate change, poor nations and the need to do something to protect them.

World leaders spent two weeks in Copenhagen and all we got was this?

It took two weeks of talks in Copenhagen, after two years of preliminary talks and in the end, to much fanfare we got....

A big, fat nothing.

Here is how The New York Times describes the so-called Copenhagen Accord:

The plan does not firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The accord is nonetheless significant in that it codifies the commitments of individual nations to act on their own to tackle global warming.

The accord provides a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward those national pollution-reduction goals, a compromise on an issue over which China bargained hard. It calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to those countries most vulnerable to a changing climate. And it sets a goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2050, implying deep cuts in climate-altering emissions over the next four decades.

But it was an equivocal agreement that was, to many, a disappointing conclusion to a two-year process that had the goal of producing a comprehensive and enforceable action plan for addressing dangerous changes to the global climate. The messy compromise mirrored the chaotic nature of the conference, which virtually all participants said had been badly organized and run.

The accord sets no goal for concluding a binding international treaty, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiations before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

Goal-setting is nice, but we have moved well beyond the time when we can just set some goals and hope for the best. We still use too much oil, still burn too much carbon and we have done nothing to protect the poor, low-lying nations who will bear the brunt of the bad stuff -- and there remain few if any incentives to keep developing nations from doing what we did to build our economies.

Why should China and India make serious efforts to address the issue, when we have shown an unwillingness to do the same?

The cautious optimism proffered by some environmental groups is really nothing more than face-saving given that, in reality, we are in no better of a position on climate change than we were before these talks began.

GOP moderates offering another flawed compromise

Moderate Republicans are looking for compromise on the gay marriage issue by proposing to strengthen the civil unions law to make it more difficult for it to be ignored.

The problem is that the only way to strengthen civil unions is to allow same-sex marriage or to remove the word marriage from the statute books altogether, turning all marriages into civil unions. Tweaking what has proven to be a flawed compromise with an equally flawed compromise is just a waste of time.

Marriage equality now.

No affordable rooms in New Jersey

I love creative protests and this certainly was a creative way to highlight the need for more affordable housing across the state:

Mary Bernadette Shannon, 59, of Trenton, dressed as Mary, and Derrick Branch, 46, of Trenton, portraying Joseph, along with clergy members and housing advocates protested on the Statehouse steps, calling for more affordable housing and help for the homeless. They were rebuffed, however, at the transition office of Gov.-elect Chris Christie.

"The same thing that was happening to Mary and Joseph over 2,000 years ago is happening to many families in New Jersey today," said Adam Gordon, an attorney from the Fair Share Housing Center. "They're looking for a place to live, they're looking for a room at the inn and they're being turned away."

Lefties do still have an imagination!

Criticism from the left on healthcare that must be addressed

I'm not sure I agree fully with Howard Dean that the healthcare bill now on the table should be scrapped -- I think he's correct on his criticism of the bill, but I'm not sure killing it will bring us back to a place where we can start over. The system as it exists is rigged against real reform, so killing this bill might just mean the end of any chance for reform.

That said, Ruth Marcus is being too dismissive -- Dean's argument must be addressed head on.

Dispatches: Rebuilding our democracy

Here is this week's Dispatches, on the need for more democracy.

And make sure to check out the comment at the end -- apparently, if you are not some kind of nutty teabagger, you don't believe in democracy.

The left must push back or admit its impotence

This is one of the better explanations of the disconnect between the Washington realists and the outside-the-Beltway idealist (yes, this is the Washington paradigm) that I've come across.

David Sirota, an activist, writer and now radio personality, has made a point of keeping his distance from Washington culture -- which has resulted in him having the ability to see beyond the narrow framework that hamstrings progressive change in the capital.

The arguments we are hearing now, that progressives should leave the president alone, are remeniscent of the same arguments made during the two-term Clinton presidency, one of the least progressive on record (welfare reform, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA, GATT, the end of Glass-Steagall, Alan Greenspan, expansion of the federal death penalty -- should I go on?). Clinton is better than the alternatives, except it was Clinton and not his conservative predecessors who managed to gut the social safety net and deal a fatal blow to the New Deal.

The argument coming from some Obama allies can be boiled down to two words: Grow up -- which is pretty ridiculous and dangerously defeatist.

But, as Sirota points out, "you hear this kind of bullshit all the time."

This is standard fare from from the Beltway insiders in The Chuch of the Savvy. Their catechism says that the public is naive and stupid to believe that a president will even try to deliver on the promises he/she made to voters as a candidate. And really, more than naive and stupid - but unrealistic and unserious, because there supposedly must be some sort of difference between what you tell voters you will try to do as president and what you can even attempt to do as president. We are expected to believe that those who don't accept this aren't patriotic believers in basic democracy, but actually like sad, petulant children who refuse "take off their pajamas and get dressed."

It's a canard, of course - one designed to justify selling out and betraying voters (in
this case, coming straight from a drug lobbyist). And the real problem with it beyond one or another issue is that it takes a big steaming shit on the entire concept of republican democracy. In that kind of system, we only get to choose our representatives once every two or four years. That forces us to rely on the campaign promises of those representatives as metrics for making our choices. Thus, if the entire idea of the campaign promise becomes an assumed joke, then we have zero metrics on which to elect our government.

There is no substantive reason why what a president cannot push what he promises on the campaign trail - especially when it comes to something like pharmaceutical reimportation, which every other industrialized country has legalized. I repeat - there is simply no substantive reason why a president cannot push what he has promised on the campaign trail. The platitudes from corporate lobbyists insisting that the alleged difference between "campaigning and governing" somehow absolves politicians from breaking their promise is deliberately designed to perpetuate the status quo.

There is another problem, which I focused on in my own column for The Progressive Populist, the danger of a personality-driven movement. I voted for Obama, but without any illusions. I said from the beginning that I thought he was too cautious, too much of a centrist and too Clinton-like, but that the other Democrats were worse and that his lofty, soaring rhetoric might generate a political change, bringing people into the process who had not been in it before.

That happened to a degree, but the cautious politician, the conciliator, returned following the election and opted for continuity rather than change. That wasn't really a surprise.

The response to Obama's make-nice approach, however, is disappointing: An apologist left has arisen that resembles the Bush backers to an uncomfortable degree. (I read an essay that made this point last week, that the kind of arguments being made by liberal Obama supporters essentially were no different than the "don't criticize the president" nonsense pushed by Bush supporters, but I cannot for the life of me remember who wrote it. Please, e-mail me if the specific essay can be identified so I can give it proper credit).

The facts are these: Obama made certain promises -- lifting the drug-importation ban, ending DADT and DOMA, getting us out of Iraq, make government more transparent, closing Gitmo -- that he has either abandoned or hedged on. He has hired the most inside of Wall Street insiders to manage the economy (see Matt Taibbi's piece makes clear). And he has allowed the healthcare debate to devolve to the point of it being nearly meaningless.

The left cannot sit back and say nothing, cannot just fall in line behind the president and support him blindly. Unless there is pressure from the left, he will continue the rightward drift we've witnessed, a drift made easier by the wind whipped up by a very vocal minority of tea-baggers on the right who have gotten much of the press attention.

If the left sits on its collective hands, then it will only prove that the harshest aspects of Chris Hedges' critique of liberals is on the money (his essay is a must read and pretty accurate, if you ask me, if a little unforgiving of lefties who opted to vote for Democrats over Nader or McKinney).

Unless liberals stand up to the president and draw their own lines in the sand, unless they accept their responsibility for creating a moral imperative for ethical action, they will prove themselves to be as useless as they always have been.

War is peace, or something like that

Barack Obama is more like George W. Bush than any of his supporters has been willing to admit. The 44th president, like his predecessor, has shown a willingness to break disagreements down into simple, binary equations, especially when it comes to his defense of empire.

"Evil does exist in the world," he said during his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, echoing his predecessor, radically simplifying the world around us. Evil, he says, justifies our use of extreme force -- which is what war is -- rather than a smaller-scale attempt to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. The president has opted to reinvigorate the 9/11 meme to justify a wider-scale effort to remake the so-called Afpak border area, even if this war of his (and it is now his war) has nothing to do with 9/11.

The troubling aspect of this -- beyond the Afghan escalation -- is that he used his Nobel acceptance to hawk his own hawkishness, to defend his own indefensible decision to ratchet up the war. Obama, of course, is not a pacifist and has never claimed to be one. He has, from the beginning, viewed Afghanistan as a war of necessity in the very same way that Bush viewed Iraq.

And like Bush, who purposely conflated Saddam Hussein with Hitler, Obama has done the same with Al Qaeda.

A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Al Qaeda is not Hitler and terrorism is not the same as Nazism. Terrorism is a tool -- like a gun or a tank -- generally used by the relatively powerless to level the playing field against more powerful nations. It's use is a symptom that our system is sick, that we have allowed some level of injustice to fester, to create an atmosphere in which violent reaction is viewed as necessary.There is no real difference between Timothy McVeigh and a Middle Eastern suicide bomber, no difference between the America militia movement and Al Qaeda. The extremisms they spout might come from different places, but the violence they unleash ultimately is the same, based on the same mix of grievance and moral certitude.

The president, however, for whatever reason, chooses to ignore this, to conflate the big ideological movements with a small regenerating band of extremists who pose a physical threat to individual security but in no way pose an existential threat to the United States.

He further argued during his speech that "it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world," as if a world that witnessed dozens of political assassinations and violent uprisings, wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria, the Middle East, a massive arms race and a calamitous international chess game between heavily armed nuclear powers can be called stable.

Obama is just a year older than I am, so I have to imagine he remembers crouching beneath his desk during air raid drills and hearing newscasters reporting on body counts and violence in American streets.

Let's be clear: There was much to like in his speech -- such as his acknowledgement that economic and social justice can prevent the slide into despair that creates the conditions in which violent extremism flourishes and his commitment to working within an international framework of established rules and in cooperation with other nations. But, in the end, his insistence that "the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace" left me wondering just how much has changed during the last 11 months.

Putting the income tax on the table

I'm glad to see the League of Municipalities, which has too often failed to stand up for low-income New Jerseyans, attempt to put an expanded income tax on the table. I've long thought that shifting the burden of education funding from local property taxpayers to a broadbased income (and corporate tax) made the most sense.

I understand the concerns being raised by Mary Forsberg of New Jersey Policy Perspective -- we've talked about them in previous interviews -- and I think they need to be considered. But the status quo is unsustainable and we have to start talking about different ways of doing things and paying for things in New Jersey.

Centrism is for suckers

This story is another example of why I dislike centrist Democrats: The nation desperately needs financial reform and reregulation, but the centrists would rather stand in the way of anything meaningful.

Dispatches: Stop the quagmire

Dispatches -- part two on Afghanistan -- is here.

Grassroots: Personality crisis

Grassroots, on the problems with a personality-driven politics, is available at The Progressive Populist.

Gay marriage opponents take to the phones

I just received a robocall from Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, the homophobic group opposed to marriage equality, that purported to be a survey but was really just a push poll designed to drum up opposition to same-sex marriage before Thursday's Senate vote.

I hung up. Maybe I should have taken the poll and skewed its results.

14 Senators to go, and none to spare

Seven state senators voted in favor of marriage equality yesterday; 21 are needed to get it through the Senate and to the Assembly. With Jennifer Beck voting no yesterday, that means supporters of same-sex marriage can only lose one more Democrat -- though two are on record as opposing same-sex marriage. The odds are not particularly good, unless Beck or Chip Bateman can be convinced to move from the "no" column to the yes column.

Here is the contact info for potential (and former) fence-sitters:

• Sen. Diane B. Allen, Republican
  11 West Broad St., Burlington, NJ 08016 (609) 239-2800


• Sen. Christopher Bateman, Republican
  36 East Main St., Somerville, NJ 08876 (908) 526-3600


• Sen. Jennifer Beck, Republican
  32 Monmouth St., 3rd Floor, Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 933-1591


• Sen. John A. Girgenti, Democrat
  507 Lafayette Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506 (973) 427-1229


• Sen. Paul A. Sarlo, Democrat
  207 Hackensack St., 2nd Floor, Wood-Ridge, NJ 07075 (201) 804-8118


• Sen. Jeff Van Drew, Democrat
  21 North Main St., Cape May Court House, NJ 08210 (609) 465-0700
  1124 North High St., Millville, NJ 08332 (856) 765-0891
  1028 East Landis Ave., Vineland, NJ 08360 (856) 696-7109
  Additional Phone, Somers Point, NJ (609) 926-3779


• Sen. Jim Whelan, Democrat
  511 Tilton Rd., Northfield, NJ 08225 (609) 383-1388

I think this covers everyone, but feel free to add or comment.

Marriage equality clears the first hurdle

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to release the marriage equality bill to the full Senate by a 7-6 vote. Sen. Bill Baroni, a Republican who represents Middlesex and Mercer counties, stayed true to his word and voted to support the bill, which would grant same-sex couples the right to marry but grant religious groups an exemption from being forced to recognized or perform the marriages.

Voting against the bill were the committee's other four Republicans -- including Jennifer Beck, who represents parts of Monmouth and Mercer counties -- and two Democrats, the committee chairman, Paul Sarlo, and its vice chairman, John Girgenti.

The religious objections, understandable if left to the religious realm, are inappropriate within a secular context. The Catholic Church -- and other religious groups -- want to imprint their religious philosophy (or in the case of the church, only a portion of its philosophy, with it weighing in loudly only on abortion and homosexuality, but not the death penalty or poverty issues), which is a violation of the religious rights of other denominations and the secular.

The legislation sponsored in the Senate by Loretta Weinberg and several others and in the Assembly by Reed Gusciora and several others protects the rights of the religious and the rights of same-sex couples and should have been supported by every member of the committee.

More thoughts on the Mets

Here is an interesting blog entry on The New York Post site from Mets beat writer Joel Sherman on the state of the Mets as baseball heads into the winter meetings and the offseason gets moving in earnest. The upshot is that the Mets should use the $25 million they have wisely, spread it around and stay away from the big-ticket free agents. Focus on getting to the mid-season in good shape and then go from there. Interesting thinking, given the weakness of this year's free-agent market.

Thoughts on the Mets

I'd bring Carlos Delgado back to the Mets if I were Omar Minaya, provided he appears healthy. He's their best option at first, far better than Adam LaRoche, and he has a real presence in the lineup. He's older, but he could probably be had for short term and it would allow the team to go hard at Matt Holliday to play left, which is a major need (Jason Bay would be a possible backup, though how he might fare in Citi Field worries me). The team also desperately needs a No. 2 starter and will be shopping in a weak market: Joel Pineiro, late of the Cardinals, seems like a fluke; Randy Wolf has too many injury questions to bring onto a staff with injury and consistency issues; Jason Marquis and Jon Garland are innings eaters, who would seem to be the best fits, but not only if the money is right.

Also on the radar, apparently, are Orlando Hudson (if the Mets can rid themselves of Luis Castillo) and Bengie Molina, who still has some gas in his tank but is not the player he was when he signed with the Giants three years ago.

In the best of all worlds, the Mets lineup would look like this:

1. SS Jose Reyes
2. 3B David Wright
3. CF Carlos Beltran
4. LF Matt Holliday
5. 1b Carlos Delgado
6. RF Jeff Francoer
7. C Benie Molina
8. 2b Orlando Hudson

Wright hitting second? Only because it seems silly to push Francoer to the seven spot. What I like about the structure of this lineup is its balance -- 1, 3 and 5 are either swith hitters more comfortable as lefties or lefties, while 2, 4 and 6 are righties.

And yet, I just have this sense that the Mets will be running some mix of mediocrities out there in left and that Henry Blanco will be getting way too many at bats for the Mets to contend.

One, two, tree -- decisions, decisions, decisions

The tree is up, but I can't tell if it's OK where it is. In recent years, we've placed it by the back window of our living room, which allowed it to be a focal point for people coming into the house.

This year, however, we have the dog's pen in that spot so we've moved the tree to the front of the house, in front of the big window in the dining room. It's there for now, but could be taken down. I've purposely not tightened the stand up in case Annie finds it completely wrong when she gets home.

In the meantime, there are papers to be graded, poems to revised, dogs to be walked and some other chores to take care of.

In America, when it's guns v. butter, butter always loses

We have no money. That is the basic argument I keep seeing from everyone across the political spectrum.

We can't afford to provide health care, can't afford an expanded jobs program, are willing to let state and local governments starve and slash programs -- but we apparently have plenty of money to escalate a war in Afghanistan.

I'd laugh, as U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told Rachel Maddow last night in a slightly different context, "if we weren‘t in so much trouble."

President Barack Obama hosted a "jobs forum" at the White House yesterday at which he essentially undercut his own formerly ambitious agenda, admitting that "our resources are limited.”

The Times, in the way it framed its story, appeared to buy into this line of argument -- despite some fine analysis in the paper by its own Paul Krugman. Here is how the Times framed the issue:

Mr. Obama’s jobs event captured the political and policy vise now squeezing the president and his party at the end of his first year. It came on the eve of a government report that is expected to show unemployment remaining in double digits, and two days after Mr. Obama emphasized as he ordered 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan that he did not want the financial burdens of the war to overwhelm his domestic agenda.

Both the domestic and the military demands on the administration are raising costs unanticipated when Mr. Obama took office, even as pressures build to arrest annual budget deficits now exceeding $1 trillion. Those demands are also eroding the broad support that swept Mr. Obama into office, especially among independent voters, and igniting a guns-versus-butter budget debate in his own party not seen since the Vietnam era.

While liberals are calling for ambitious job-creating measures along the lines of the New Deal and Republicans want to scale back government spending programs, Mr. Obama talked at the White House on Thursday of limited programs that he suggested could provide substantial bang for the buck when it comes to job creation. Among them was the weatherization program.

Called “cash for caulkers,” it would enlist contractors and home-improvement companies like Home Depot — whose chief executive was on the panel — to advertise the benefits, much as car dealers did for the clunkers trade-ins this year.

Yet that relatively modest proposal underscores the limits of the government’s ability to affect a jobless recovery with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years — and Mr. Obama acknowledged as much. Just as he said in Tuesday’s Afghanistan speech that the nation could not afford an open-ended commitment there, especially when the economy is so weak and deficits so high, Mr. Obama emphasized at the jobs forum that the government had already done a lot with his $787 billion economic stimulus package and the $700 billion financial bailout that he inherited.

“I want to be clear: While I believe the government has a critical role in creating the conditions for economic growth, ultimately true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector,” he told his audience, which included executives and some critics from American Airlines, Boeing, Nucor, Google, Walt Disney and FedEx.

The key phrases are "costs unanticipated when Mr. Obama took office" -- unanticipated by whom? -- and "the limits of the government’s ability to affect a jobless recovery." The assumption here -- and throughout Washington -- is that the federal deficit must be an impediment to domestic discretionary spending, and that there is an unlimited supply of cash for the war in Afghanistan (not to mention the war that continues in Iraq or a massive and bloated military bureaucracy with bases around the world).

The assumption is that military spending is not discretionary, and that is a dangerous assumption -- not just because of the budget implications, but because it uses the budget (the place where our priorities are measured in dollars and sense) to endorse the further militarization of our nation.

Basically, our budgets show us to be a nation that prizes power and brute force over compassion, that believes we need more guns and more advance weaponry at all costs, even at the expense of making sure that our citizens have food, shelter or health care.

It is guns over butter for us and the change from Bush II to Barack Obama has done little to change that.

Only 11,000 jobs?

This, apparently, is what we've come to -- being pleased that the economy lost just 11,000 jobs last month. Forget job growth, I guess. As long as we stop the bleeding, we're happy.

Shameless familial promotion: My nephew's in A Christmas Carol

Notice the smiling kid in the red vest in the photo to the right? Cute, right? That's my nephew Joey, the family's latest acting star. He's playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol at Playhouse 22. As you can see from the photo, he's quite excited to get the chance (his third time on stage, including a performance at theater camp and a small role in Godspell in Parlin). The guy with the beard is Art Hickey, who plays Ebenezer Scrooge. (My brother Mark and sister-in-law Ana (Joey's parents) also make appearances. It is the 13th year that the East Brunswick theater is putting on their version of Charles Dickens' holiday classic.

Showtimes are:

• Friday, Dec. 11, at 8 p.m.
• Saturday, Dec. 12, at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, Dec. 13, at 3 p.m.
• Friday, Dec. 18, at 8 p.m.
• Saturday, Dec. 19, at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, Dec. 13, at 3 p.m.

The playhouse is located in the new East Brunswick Community Arts Center, 721 Cranbury Road. Tickets: $12. Reservations: 732-254-3939. Sponsored by Mayo & Russ, Attorneys at Law.

Runner's diary, Thursday

I ran again -- woo hoo!! Three miles in 27:30, which is not quite rockin', but still on a roll.

Marriage equality is getting closer

It is official: Marriage equality is on the state Senate's agenda -- and if it can get through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, we could be looking at a full Senate vote by Thursday.

Here is the text of the release from Senate President Richard Codey's office:

TRENTON – Senate President Richard J. Codey (D-Essex) today confirmed that the full Senate will consider bill S1967 – the “Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act"– next week.

“Should the Senate Judiciary Committee approve the bill on Monday, the full Senate will be the first house to consider the bill during a floor vote on Thursday.”

The Senate voting session is scheduled for 2 pm on Thursday, December 10.

The Senate has been the wild card in this, with the Democrats holding just a two-vote cushion (there are 23 Democrats in the 40-member body) and at least four Democrats on the fence. If four Democrats vote against it, that would mean at least two Republican votes would be needed -- which appears likely. The Assembly, with 47 votes seems in better shape on this, but it is difficult to know for sure.

So, the advice here is to keep the pressure on. The hearing and potential vote next week are happening because LGBT community and its supporters have worked dilligently to convince legislators to do the right thing. Now is not the time to sit back and count votes.

Bernie on Bernanke: Just say no to Ben

This petition to support Bernie Sanders -- which comes via a tweet from David Sirota -- is worth signing. Note to Senate: Just say no to Bernanke.

Scheer logic on an irrational war

Robert Scheer should be the one giving advice to President Obama.

New York votes down marriage equality

It went down in New York, but there remains hope that marriage-equality can survive a vote in the New Jersey Legislature. Rumors are that it will be heard on Monday, but the Legislature's schedule doesn't show the bill -- A818, the "Civil Marriage and Religious Protection Act" -- so we will have to wait and hope.

Dispatches: Obama's folly

Dispatches is on our site -- on the war (what else?).

Poll: Public supports consolidations, sort of

A Quinnipiac Poll issued last week contained what I think is an interesting nugget that indicates that New Jerseyans may not be as selfish as I've come to think..

There is no doubt that we have too much government in New Jersey. We have a bloated state government, expensive and often superfluous county governments and more local entities than any other state on a per capita basis. All told, there are more tha 1,400 taxing entities in the state, an absurd figure that creates its own momentum for more and more taxes.

South Brunswick and Monroe, for instance, are each served by five separate and independent taxing authorities -- three fire districts, a school district and governing body. Jamesburg is served by three, Cranbury by two, Plainsboro by three and so on.

And yet we keep hearing that consolidation of towns and school districts is off the table.

But what should we make of last week's poll which showed a huge majority of respondents answer yes to this question:

One recommendation to raise the money needed to fund a cut in property taxes is
to merge neighboring municipal governments and school districts. Would you
support or oppose merging school districts or governments in the county in which
you live if it meant lowering your property taxes?

The numbers: 73 percent favored mergers, with little variation based on political affiliation, gender or race.

And support has increased over the last three years, from 61 percent who said they'd support mergers in 2006 to 73 percent today.

The question, however, is this: Can these poll results be translated into real merger proposals? I'm not so sure. Much of what I know is anecdotal, but my read on the situation based on discussions with people in the area -- mayors and council members, school officials, parents, seniors, etc. -- is that most people favor mergers when their communities are not affected. Their support, basically, is theoretical.

That said, I think the state could move this question along if it were to force the consolidation question onto the agenda. We have a commission meant to look into the issue -- one that has could have had more teeth -- but it has been dormant. That was Gov. Jon Corzine's fault. It's now in Chris Christie's hands and I can only hope he will let the committee loose on the question and develop some hard data that can be used to convince voters -- forget the mayors -- that they may just save some money, get better services and not lose the rather amorphous notion of identity.

Maddow cheerleads

Rachel Maddow, speaking after the president's speech during MSNBC's analysis, said something that puzzled me and really raises questions about whether she is anything more than a cheerleader for Obama.

I like Maddow, generally, but how she can think that this speech "neutralizes" critics is beyond me. The left certainly will not be pacified by this speech because the antiwar left knows that you can't call an escalation a withdrawal (thanks to Bob Witanek for this line of thinking). The right, on the other hand, would criticize Obama for killing Osama bin Laden with his bare hands, their hatred for the president running so deep that it blinds them to reason.

And the independents? As Chris Matthews said (did I just write that?), they are weary of the war and want it to end.

The political analysis, of course, is the problem, whether it is Maddow cheerleading for the president or Fox making things up to make him look bad. Political analysis, however, is limited and empty. What we need is real policy analysis and real information.

We already have spent too many lives -- on both sides -- and money. We need to get out and get out quickly.

Time to rethink Afghanistan

I interviewed Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, which produces video documentaries on progressive subjects with the goal of distributing them on a grassroots basis, earlier this evening, before the president spoke. (It is for next week's Dispatches.)

His film, "Rethink Afghanistan," pretty much makes the case that our presence in Afghanistan is only inflaming the situation in Afghanistan.

Greenwald told me that the president is working on the "misguided notion that this was making us more secure."

Obama, he said, "should look at the fundamental issues." He echoed something I said in this week's column (out tomorrow): That the internal debate essentially "was a travesty of a debate."

"It was whether to have 10,000, 20,000 or 30 ,000 more troops," he said. "It should have been asking why are we there what are our security interests. If al Qaida is enemy, then what is the most effective way to get the less than 100 members who are in Afghanistan."

Just as importantly, he added this: "How do you justify the billions of billions of dollars (on the war) when there is not enough money for healthcare, for jobs, for housing."

I wish the president could have talked with Greenwald before his speech tonight.

Reappointment with disaster

Why has President Barack Obama reappointed Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman? Why is he likely to skate through his Senate confirmation hearing? Why do we think Wall Street is more important than the rest of us?

Why?
Why?
Why?

Runner's diary, Tuesday

I did three miles this morning, before a little lifting. So the workouts begin.