Bob Torricelli

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Former U.S. Senator Robert G. Torricelli

The economic crisis is deepening. The declining rate of employment, mortgage payments, international trade and GNP is accelerating.

The current danger is that the Obama Administration will interpret these facts as evidence of a recession that is simply deeper in scale than previous down turns. It isn't deeper, it's different. You can almost feel the structure of our economy coming unglued.

Simply pouring billions into conventional economic vehicles will do nothing except financially restrict other more important options. If ever there was a time to break conventional molds, this is it. The Obama Administration needs to forecast evolving events and begin implementing measures for the crisis as they're likely to be perceived in six months. Nobody this summer is going to believe that educational assistance and a modest road building program are a solution. We shouldn't fool ourselves now either.

Here are a few things that are aggressive now but likely to be standard international procedure by September:

In a fundraising letter, former U.S. Sen. Bob Torricelli praises Dennis Shulman's integrity.: Getty Images Photo
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Torricelli has endorsed blind Rabbi Dennis Shulman in his race against three-term U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-Wantage).  

"Dennis' integrity and unique background of identifying and solving problems leave him well-equpped to oppose Garrett -- and to serve in Congress honorably and effectively," Torricelli wrote in a letter seeking to raise money for Shulman's campaign.  "Garrett sat idly by in his seat on the House Financial Services Committee, while the housing bubble burst, all the while pocketing thousands of dollars in contributions from Countrywide Financial and leaving his day-to-day operations to his Chief of Staff, a former Countrywide lobbyist.  

Torricelli also slammed Garrett for claiming an erroneous exemption on his state tax return, "cheating his fellow citizens out of up to $40,000 a year."  He called Garrett an "extremist whose values are not those of his constituents, nor of the nation."

“Bob Torricelli has always been most comfortable wading around the sleaze and slime of the corrupt Bergen County Democrat machine.  Guess you take Torch out of the slime, but you can’t take sleaze out of the Torch.  Torricelli was forced to leave the United States Senate because his ethics and values told him to use his office to get himself a Rolex, a closet full of $5000 suits, a grandfather clock, an expensive oriental rug, a jumbo plasma screen TV, and thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions," said Republican State Chairman Tom Wilson.  "Now his ‘ethics and values’ tell him to slander, malign, and lie about Scott Garrett.  Asking Bob Torricelli to be your ethics watchdog is about as smart as asking Michael Vick to watch your dog. “

One name that probably won't receive much consideration for United States Attorney, if Barack Obama wins the presidency:  Walter Timpone, a politically connected ex-federal prosecutor who has coveted the job for years.  Timpone gave the maximum $4,600 to Rob Andrews' campaign for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination earlier this year, and his contributions in the presidential race went to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, not Obama.  Timpone spent eleven years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and was named by a panel of Judges to monitor elections in Passaic County.  He currently represents Laborers International Union of America (LIUNA), which backed Andrews against Lautenberg in the Senate primary.

The financial debacle on Wall Street may change many things. Our international power, standard of living and individual security might all change. Every cloud, however, has a silver lining. At least the American people will be spared much of the Republican rhetoric that reflects the policy choices that produced this mess.   Here are my favorite classic Republican lines that we might not hear for a while.

There's something missing from the Republican Convention. There is a need for a camera behind the curtain where speakers greet friends and family after they speak. Then we could discover if some of the Republican speakers can actually keep a straight face after their remarks.

It's a fair question. Mitt Romney assailed the Democrats for the growth in government spending. I assume that he is aware that there's been a Republican President for the last eight years who governed during most of that time with a Republican Congress. He expressed outrage at the mounting federal debt. Everyone in the convention hall must know that Bill Clinton balanced the budget and was reducing the debt until the  Bush Administration added more debt than any President in history.

My favorite was the assault on Democrats over national security and the continuous praise of American soldiers. I can't be the only one who remembers George Bush sending young Americans into combat without flak vests and in unprotected Humvees. Wouldn't protecting these soldiers be a better sign of devotion?

An observation on how the New York Times’ coverage of New Jersey has changed over the years: when Bergen County Republican Chairman Anthony Statile resigned in 1973, the New York Times wrote five separate stories on the special election to replace him – but did not cover the passage of the state budget in 2008. The promotion of David Chen from Trenton to New York City Hall ends a chain of highly influential New Jersey-based New York Times reporters (like Joseph Sullivan, Ronald Sullivan, David Halbfinger and David Kocieniewski) that influenced New Jersey politics as much as any in-state newspaper. As recently as 2001 and 2002, the NYT played a key role in ending the political careers of Gov. Donald DiFrancesco and U.S. Sen. Bob Torricelli.

Superior Court Judge Harold Hollenbeck will reach the mandatory retirement age of seventy on December 29, possibly ending a career in public service that began with his election to the East Rutherford Borough Council in 1966. But some Republican insiders say that Hollenbeck could be the GOP’s strongest candidate to challenge Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney in 2010.

Hollenbeck was elected to the State Assembly in 1967, at the age of 29, as part of a Republican sweep of Bergen County in the second mid-term election of Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes. After two terms in the Assembly, he won a State Senate seat in 1971.

The new field director of Barack Obama’s Campaign for Change in New Jersey is Tim Del Monico, who is on leave from his position as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone.  Del Monico worked for the 2002 New Jersey Coordinated Campaign in 2002 and for U.S. Sen. Bob Torricelli and Assemblyman Peter Eagler before joining John Kerry’s presidential campaign.   Del Monico has worked campaigns in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, California and Arizona.

One hesitates to quote Shakespeare to the Editors of The Record. The thought of all that dust rising from their library shelves is enough to make me sneeze. They do, however, "protest too much".

The Editors of the Record (known affectionately as the "Hacks on the Hackensack") announced that they were closing their main office, firing photographers, and reporters would operate from homes and automobiles by cell phone. This announcement, in the context of falling subscription rates and declining advertising revenues, led to the inevitable observation that the Record is on a course to bankruptcy.

It was a fair point. Newspapers are failing every day. The Record is located in one of the best demographic regions of the nation but has been increasingly marginalized. Its readership is aging and limited to the least educated and lowest economic base of Bergen County. Subscription rates and the County mortality rate are almost exactly equal.

The Record probably would have died anyway but the decision to abandon its role as the staple of suburban living and adopt an angry and mean tone accelerated the larger destructive trends. Newspapers are dying every day but some survive by filling niches. The Star Ledger has become the only credible source of state news while the New York Times and Washington Post have become indispensable as sources of international or national information. The Record decided that it had a role as the mirror of everything that was ugly on the face of its own constituency.