Robert Torricelli's blog

The eloquence of their words and the powerful example of their lives has given the Rutgers Women's Basketball team an important victory over ignorance. An important element of this success was public reaction and another was economic power. Advertisers decided that subsidizing ignorance was bad business.

Removing Imus from the air is hardly enough to solve a national problem. Entertainment by divisive, hateful speech is an epidemic. It is also a disease that can be found in New Jersey.

When 101.5 began to build itself into a state-wide forum for news and ideas, I was a willing conspirator. I wrote to the FCC in support of expanding the station's license and even assisted with a new station acquisition.

Jon Corzine's near tragic accident has interrupted an intense debate among journalists, legislators and federal prosecutors. The subject has been the legislative practice of placing "Christmas Tree" items in appropriations legislation.

The speculation has been that these expenditures, quietly placed in legislation during the still of the night, are inevitably self serving and wasteful. The Governor's accident, rather than distracting from this debate, might actually shed a little light on the subject.

Governor Corzine might owe his life to the quick evacuation to the trauma center at Cooper Hospital. Cooper has long possessed a quality emergency unit that was the rival of its North Jersey counterparts. What it didn't posses was a modern helicopter landing facility that could get patients efficiently from the site of an accident to an operating table.

Jon

We're all thinking about you buddy.

Bob

It's all so predictable. An idiot shock jock makes outrageous and bigoted comments and African American leaders demand that he be fired.

The only difference is that the shock

I didn't need any new reasons to vote against Rudy Gulliani. There was already the dragging of the investment bankers out of their offices in handcuffs. None were ever convicted of anything.
There were the deep racial divisions that he caused in the City. Then he created an atmosphere of intolerance by attempting to censure art exhibits.

Governor Corzine hit a rare triple last week with two runners on base. It was an adroit play for a man who takes pride in not engaging in political maneuvering.

It's every politician's dream. Years of reading inaccurate and often unfair reporting now offer a chance for retribution. Here's proof that I can spend just as little time considering my subject and researching my facts as our common tormentors in the press. It's the best and worst of the media list!

It's the most contentious issue in politics. Every decade the state must redraw districts for the Congressional delegation. Friendships are lost and hours of productive time is squandered.

The tendency of the delegation and the redistricting commission has always been to approach the issue on a bipartisan basis. Both parties and all incumbents are accommodated to the fullest extent possible.

What began as a brush fire could burn down the house. Brian Stack's successful insurgent bid to oust State Senator Bernard Kenny has the makings of one of those generational changes in Hudson politics. Stack has one of the formidable political operations in the State. It's not a question of just his candidacy. What's interesting is what follows. Joe Doria's decision to retire (average intellect of legislature drops as a result) opens the door of the State Senate to Sandy Cunningham. Former Mayor Harvey Smith now joins the team for the Assembly. Sal Vega has his own insurgency going in West New York against the forces of Albio Sires. It's quite a coalition. You do the math.

The smartest political mind in Hudson belongs to my old friend Nick Sacco. Nick and the new crowd are one meeting away from realigning the structure of Hudson politics. Everybody claims that it won't happen. I'll let you know when it's done.

There was a curious omission when the Legislature presented 98 proposals for lowering property taxes. It wasn't a new idea but it was an obvious one.

Thousands of dollars in local taxes are spent every year on legal notices. Every community is forced by law to buy advertising in local papers. The purpose is sound. The community needs to be informed of meetings, bankruptcies and other legal proceedings.

It's a remnant of a time when we wrote letters with quill pens and communicated with friends abroad by telegraph. The ads have the added disadvantage of being unreadable and inefficient but, curiously, they remain a part of every newspaper and a burden on every local town budget.

My former home in Bergen County is a great example. The number of homes that are Internet connected is overwhelming and rising. Subscription to the county's only newspaper, The Record, represents a minority and is falling. No commercial advertiser intending to reach Bergen County homes would choose to advertise exclusively in The Record. So, why are we mandating seventy communities to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on unreadable legal notices in The Record or even smaller shopper papers that lie discarded at the end of suburban driveways?