Robert Torricelli's blog

The most driving legal force in our society has always been the law of unintended consequences.   The New Jersey Supreme Court in its Mt. Laurel decision intended to provide equal access to housing. The more immediate impact was to worsen the problem of suburban sprawl as every community sought to accommodate every income category.

Jon

We're all thinking about you buddy.

Bob

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?

Few people who knew Larry Craig were probably surprised by the news of his arrest. Washington isn't known as a city to keep secrets and his sexual orientation was generally understood. What was surprising was the speed and intensity with which his Republican colleagues separated themselves from him.

Within hours of Craig's acknowledgement of his arrest for lewd conduct in a Minneapolis airport restroom, he was stripped of his Committee assignments. Senators McCain and Coleman urged him to resign.

Craig has to be wondering about the intensity of the reaction. Perhaps he might reach some understanding in the hypocrisy of his situation. His colleagues must recall his vitriolic speeches demanding Bill Clinton's resignation. He was a self appointed spokesman for the American family and he fought every attempt at advocating the rights of gay Americans.

I'm as supportive of progressive causes as any good Democrat. I feel as though I've led some lonely fights but sometimes you've got to recognize when things are just crazy.

The fight for affordable housing is a just cause. People should have the ability to live in communities where they work. Zoning powers shouldn't be used to exclude citizens because of economic status. The question is how far this is going to go.

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.

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The State has a debt of over $30 billion. The annual deficit could reach  another $3 billion and the unfunded liability of the State Pension is in excess of $27 Billion. Those aren't numbers that argue for approving new bond issues.

There's just one exception. State voters are being asked to approve a $200 million bond issue to continue buying open space. It's part of the most successful state program, Green Acres, in the State's history.

If you weren't alive in the months that followed the Kennedy assassination, the death of Lady Bird Johnson probably held little meaning. She was the last of those few towering figures that moved through days of anguish with strength and grace.

The shadow that Lyndon Johnson cast over a political generation was so large that it transcended his death. No one could aspire to leadership without the counsel of his widow.

In the spring of 1981, I was a part of just such a mission. Walter Mondale had lost the Vice Presidency. He was traveling the country to prepare for a Presidential campaign in 1984 and I was his traveling aide.

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.