NJ FY22 Budget – Pension Video

The New Jersey FY-2022 one-year band-aid to get from election to election, otherwise know as the state budget, was introduced by Governor Phil Murphy today:

Here is the pension victory lap portion:

Not That Bondage

Joseph Cryan is one of those white males who run New Jersey, often through variegated fronts, with this history of ‘public service’:

• 2001 – 2015: State Assembly
• 2015-2018: Union County Sheriff
• 2018 – now: State Senate
• 2018-now: Executive Director MCUA

In 2015 Cryan stepped aside for Jamel Holley to take over the Assembly seat for the 20th district. Some people (including, it appears, Jamel Holley) through that Cyran’s break with the legislature had to do with his ‘kinky proclivities‘ but it turns out that the real reason was that Cryan was out of step with his party’s decision to back Christie’s mini-attack on public employee benefits.

A User’s Guide to Democracy: How America Works

A primer that we all should theoretically be up on but, since we often do not get this stuff taught or beamed in to us, there were some notable nuggets.

Crystal Balling

Without even perfunctory discussion of issues like government debt and campaign finance reform (both at record crisis levels) a nation has been voting blind for weeks and I have nothing to add about who should be elected tomorrow (or whenever) though a lot of people do and I would be interested in what others think.

Biden and Trump’s approach to retirement savings and security in 2021

Yahoo Finance put out a webinar with Adam Shapiro throwing out questions to Alicia Munnell and Andrew Biggs.

Takeaways:

Delphi Oracle

What is Donald Trump expecting to be doing in 89 days?

According to a memo he sent out yesterday:

Debating Pensions

There have to be thousands of debates going on prior to election day in this country and the various pension crises have to be mentioned in at least a few of them. Or at least that’s what I thought when I went searching for an easy blog post in the midst of the 5500 crunch (26 forms to go) but all I could find was one – from the 36th district race for state senate in Connecticut:

Disenfranchised in 5 Minutes

The Vote By Mail (VBM) process started for me today as my ballot came in the mail (as did my daughter’s who has not lived here full-time in 10 years) and, though I intended not to vote I thought I would look through the material out of curiosity. Five minutes later I think I disqualified myself from voting.

America’s Ugly Election

England, as represented by an article in The Economist this month*, is properly perturbed about our November election since:

America is unusual in the degree of power it gives to Republican and Democratic partisans to administer elections. Decisions over who is removed from lists of eligible voters when they are updated, the design of ballot papers, where polling stations are located, whether early voting is allowed and how many people have to witness a postal vote – things which in other mature democracies are in the hands of non-partisan commissions – are all taken by people with a D or an R by their name. If the election is close then all this will be litigated over, and ultimately end up in courts presided over by judges who have also been appointed by Republican or Democratic governors and presidents.

Pretty scary to an outsider but then the The Economist speculates (with my comment):

If the election is close and there are delays in counting ballots on election night, it could well appear that Mr. Trump is winning in some key states. He might then claim victory (or have Fox do it for him) before the results were in, as he did in Florida’s 2018 mid-terms.

The picture gets uglier when you look at what’s going on in New Jersey on the ground*.

Who You Gonna Believe?

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A couple of local examples.