Cigar? Cigarette? Wad of cash?

So how does a truck dealer pass a bribe to an elected official? Seems the preferred method locally is to stuff the cash into a cigarette pack or cigar tube and pass it along at an area restaurant, as shown in our story Saturday about the 19-count indictment against the owners of a Howell truck dealership. They were charged last week with bribing officials in Monmouth and Ocean counties over eight years. See: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060729/NEWS/607290351

Hey, at least that method kicks some to the state, with New Jersey's costly cigarette tax. For every grand or so shoved into a cigarette pack for a local elected official, we get a couple of bucks back to the state coffers, so they can waste it by giving somebody's relative a no-show job. Whoohoo!

Reading through the story is enough to turn anyone's stomach, such as reports of $2,500 shoved in a cigar tube, $1,200 stuffed in a cigarette pack, then town and county governments being "regularly" overcharged for vehicles from this company, and county officials ordering "unnecessary equipment and supplies" from the truck dealer. With my money. And yours. Somebody hand me a loose-change-filled bottle of Pepto.

Of course it was from the federal Operation Bid Rig investigation that these indictments arose. Our state Law & Public Safety Department couldn't find corrupt, unethical activity if it was sitting right there in the AG's office.
Oh. Never mind.

Talk about a leap of faith!

I recall the disappointment I felt a few times when some of my favorite radio stations changed their formats. One area rock station's conversion into easy listening was a heart-breaker years ago. I had to reprogram my car radio fast!

Imagine the reaction of the folks in Kingsburg, Calif., who listened to KFYE-FM. Last week, it changed from playing Christian music, sermons and Bible stories to its new genre: "Porn Radio -- all sex radio, all the time." The playlist included all songs with suggestive lyrics and titles. The tamer songs were spiced up with simultaneous recordings of moaning. I hope they gave their audience plenty of warning.

Yesterday, the station halted the racy lineup and started playing a loop of the station owner saying, "Now that we got your attention ..." and asking listeners to call the station with input on where the station should go with its format.

I wonder if anybody was still listening? Or if, over the week and a half they were playing nothing but nasty, they got a new crowd that will spurn the "K-LOVE" inspirational format they've returned to?

Mom and Dad allowed a keg?

I was floored when I saw the top headline in Saturday's Local News section, "Police stop teen's kegger; family arrested." Seems the Mom and Dad allowed their 18-year-old daughter to have a keg at a "mock wedding" (what the heck is that?) she was hosting. The Mom said "everything was going fine until about 12:30 (a.m.) when people who were uninvited started showing up."
Everything was NOT going fine. There were underage kids drinking in their back yard. And the parents went to bed while the party was going on. Are they out of their minds? OF COURSE there are going to be uninvited kids showing up. If you put a keg in your back yard, word will spread quickly and the "Party at so-and-so's house" will be swarmed by cars filled with teenagers.

Waste, waste, whoopee!

The truckloads of money spent with little or no oversight at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey boggles the mind. It's as if a whole bunch of blank checkbooks were tossed about in the offices with an invitation to "Shop till ya drop!"

It stuns me that there are so many who are so willing to be so dirty with so much of our money. Stories of state money used to throw holiday parties, millions spent on "consultants" and lobbyists, $88.3 million going to various vendors without approved purchase orders, a trustee who muscled a relative into a job - a job for which the relative was unqualified until the criteria were downgraded. The salary, of course, wasn't downgraded.

I'd love to know how many people are on the government books who do little or no work. I know there are plenty of hard-working government employees, likely picking up the slack for their connected colleagues who show up and do nothing ... if they show up at all. That's got to drive them nuts.

Big business in barf?

US Airways Group Inc. - among the first airline companies to put ads on seat-tray tables - plans to sell ads on barf bags.

EEEEEEEEEYEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

"We've always been on the cutting edge for this kind of marketing," said a spokesman. A marketing professor suggested motion sickness medicine or Pepto-Bismol might make sense.
But really ... when you're about to hurl, are you going to stop and read the bag first? Nobody's going to want to read it after, that's for sure.

Surprise! Farber ponies up for her own attorney

So Attorney General Zulima Farber is paying her own attorney fees in the probe into whether she helped her boyfriend beat a couple of traffic tickets. The sad thing is, why is that even a question? Of course she should pay for her own attorney fees. But this is New Jersey, and Farber's already shown by her actions and her dreadful driving history that she believes she deserves special treatment. She's still trying to maintain that her showing up at the traffic stop had no bearing on the police voiding the tickets they had already written to her boyfriend. Puhleeeeze.

She should also pay her high-powered lawyer to help her draft a letter of resignation. She's gotta go.

Death by Coca-Cola?

Another crazy lawsuit: A St. Louis weight-loss instructor is suing the Coca-Cola Co. over its "My Coke Rewards" campaign where customers earn points by buying Coca-Cola products. This lawsuit charges that it might encourage kids to drink so much of the sugary soft drink they could die. Puh-leeze! She said she filed the lawsuit out of moral obligation, that kids would have to drink hundreds of Cokes a day to win the high-end prizes. Coke responded there are several special contests on the Internet where participants can earn 50,000 points without a single sip.

Let's take this lawsuit a step further: Most kids can't afford hundreds of sodas a day. They'd have to steal money to pay for them, or heaven forbid, break into soda machines. Maybe she could add a claim that Coke is also encouraging a life of crime, not to mention all the belching that'll be going on ... can that harm the ozone?

Maybe this lady just really never forgave them for the whole "New Coke" disaster of the 1980s. Or perhaps she thinks that Life cereal's "Mikey" really died after chugging a Coke after eating Pop Rocks.

Is MVC compromising safety?

So the Motor Vehicle Commission is proposing to change the rules, to allow some cars to pass inspection even if they have minor infractions, such as a broken wiper blade or a wimpy horn, with a warning to get the problem fixed or face a ticket.

I've had two cases, one recently, when a co-worker told me I had a burned-out brake light days before I went to inspection, so I was able to fix it before heading to Eatontown. In the second instance, another burned-out bulb (yes, I now know to check them ahead of time) caused me to fail, go get the light fixed and return to Eatontown.

We disagree on this around the office. Some say it's a good idea to eliminate the hassle of having to return to the station for something minor and worth the savings for the MVC (estimated at $3.5 million). Others say it'd just give people a pass to drive around with unsafe cars. Would people go ahead and make the minor fixes if they weren't required to return for a passing sticker, or would they just blow it off and drive around with a busted windshield wiper or a lousy horn?

What will they come up with next to tax?

I remember thinking once that former Gov. McGreevey must have watched out of the car window while he was being driven around, trying to think up new things to tax. Remember the $1.50 fee on each tire on a new car (including, I believe, the donut)? How on earth did he come up with that idea? What other ridiculous taxes could he add, I cautiously wondered?
Looks like Corzine and crew do the same thing:
"Hey, look at the tan on her." Tanning salons! Tax 'em!
"Boy, I have a stiff neck." Massages! Tax 'em!
"These self-storage places seem to be popping up everywhere." Tax 'em!
"I'm getting paunchy just sitting around the Statehouse." Health club memberships. Tax 'em!

People try to save money by bulk buying at Costco or BJ's. So now those membership fees will be taxed. Other stupid new taxes include those on tattoos, limousines, floor installation, contracted landscaping and -- my favorite -- shipping and handling. How can you tax a handling? Only in Trenton would they think that one up.

What happened to the spirit of those who drove to the Statehouse in the early 90s -- rolls of toilet paper streaming from their car antennas -- to protest all the new taxes? Have we just become so used to being slowly nickel and dimed to the poorhouse? What other ridiculous items could they possibly come up with to tax?

Slow down, and try to get along a little better

A report released last week by AAA Mid-Atlantic shows we've got increasing levels of anger when we're behind the wheel. That bothers me big time. I've seen too many people lost to senseless, preventable accidents.

I've also seen the scary face of road rage, in big and little ways. People who bang down hard on the horn and scream out insults for something as silly as the person in front of them waiting two or three seconds after the traffic light has turned green to start moving, to those who tailgate anyone who has made any type of driving error. Sure, we all see people make driving mistakes. We also see people who are just lousy or obnoxious drivers. We help when we alert them to a mistake or help them avoid an accident they don't see.

We don't help when we go overboard. About 40 percent of those surveyed admitted to "punishing" other drivers. Do they think that somehow makes them better?

Several years back, I got caught in a traffic circle. I was behind someone who had no idea how to navigate one and stopped dead in the middle of the circle, with me stuck behind. About 30 seconds later, a guy who came plowing around the circle (well over the speed limit) and had to swerve when he got to us pulled up, stopped his car and started screaming obscenities -- in full view of my then 6-year-old niece, who he very clearly saw. (Wow, were her eyes wide open when he went off on his 15-second F-bomb-laden tirade. I so regretted not having automatic windows.) I remember thinking -- as his eyes seemed to be rolling around in his head -- that he was going to have a heart attack right there.

Lousy drivers are frightening. Obnoxious drivers are frightening. But guys like that one, who probably would have slugged me and the driver in front of me if he had the chance, are probably the most frightening of all.

Trying some optimism on for size

Now that the budget mess looks like it's over with, I'm wondering what's going to happen next. Where will Gov. Corzine go from here? Will he attack the ingrained problems of New Jersey government? Will he push through the reforms we need? He sold himself as a successful businessman who could pull our state out of its rut with his acumen. Will he have the guts to demand that all the no-show, politically appointed, overpaid people on the state payroll take a hike?

Run the state like a business, people say. In some ways you can't -- it's a government, not a business. But some business basics would go a long way toward getting New Jersey onto a better financial path, including booting out the dead weight and demanding more efficient production from the labor force.

If the governor has -- as some surmise -- presidential ambitions, he has to win over the residents of New Jersey first. If he can pull us out of our fiscal morass, bring property taxes down and root out the corruption (he'll have to can Attorney General Zulima Farber ASAP if he wants to work on that!) that makes New Jersey the butt of so many jokes, he could do just that. I do hope he has those ambitions, and that his goal is to spend eight years repairing New Jersey. Then, with the state's residents heralding him as a hero, he can aim for the White House. Otherwise, if the governorship was his top goal, he's there.

(More spell-check fun: the suggestion for replacing "Corzine" is "coercion." Go figure.)

At least entertain us!

Watching several days of the same circumstances: the procedure for calling in the governor for his morning pep talk to our state's legislators (he seemed to growl more today -- his insistence of having a budget "Today! Today! Today!" made me wonder if Neil Diamond was giving the address), I started wishing it at least could be a little more fun to watch.

Picture it: at 9:10 to 9:15 (the time the 9 a.m. speeches usually start happening), when Speaker Joe Roberts asks for "Ayes" to open the session, I want someone to yell "Nay!" Not that he gives them the opportunity: He hears the Ayes, then says, in almost a single breath: "Those-opposed-say-nay-none-opposed-the-ayes-have-it." Just once, somebody yell out "Nay!" and shake up the crowd a little.

When announcing the governor's arrivals, can't Senate President Dick Codey, just once -- in his best Ed McMahon -- say, "HEEEERE'S JONNY!" Then, have Gov. Corzine enter dressed in swim trunks and a T-shirt, zinc oxide on his nose and carrying a boogie board, not surrounded by State Police, but by lifeguards. Say he's on his way to Island Beach State Park. Bring the whole Legislature. Let them either pass a budget together or get a sunburn.

Unfortunately, there's nothing fun or funny going on in the Statehouse. The joke is on us. And we're not amused.

Make 'em all non-essential

How embarrassing is it to be a New Jerseyan right now? With several out-of-town relatives visiting recently, none of them flinched at the stories of a government shutting down because the ding-a-lings who run our state can't figure out how to do what every other state is able to do. But the reason my relatives didn't flinch is because they're all ex-Jerseyans. They know.

Can we hire another state's Legislature and governor to take over for a while? Let's outsource. I used to dislike that word. But here, I think it could work -- and benefit the state's taxpayers at the same time.

(Quick aside: As I spell-checked that, the suggestion for changing "Jerseyans" to "jerkiness" was too good not to share, considering the topic.)