PEW Reactions

I have been holding on to this youtube waiting for an opportune moment:
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That opportunity has come as it was reported that a study released yesterday* from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that “the New Jersey and Kentucky funds are in such perilous shape that they risk running dry.”

Reaction, first from Kentucky:

S5 Reporters Take

The only video reaction so far to the conditional veto of S5 is a minute from John Reitmeyer of njspotlight.com:
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The problem here….

Sitle Nails It

I was curious about newspaper circulation and the Wikipedia entry only went up to 2013 with The Star-Ledger coming in as the largest in New Jersey and number 16 nationally with a print circulation of 180,271 and digital circulation (whatever that may mean) of 160,507. In doing some searching I found a 2015 update that had The Star-Ledger down to 24 nationally with total circulation of 170,077 and in New Jersey now behind The Record which was at 242,567.

Coincidentally I just came across an article on the The Record’s website that explains the hypocrisy of the lame duck pension bill we will soon get.

Tomorrow I will post an original blog with some startling numbers on what the increase in pension contributions (especially for local governments) will be for FY19 based on the latest actuarial reports (participate in the poll at the end of this blog) but for now here is the full article by Charles Stile. This is the type of jurnalism we used to buy newspapers for.

New Jersey Budget After Christie

Incoming governor Phil Murphy started making the rounds of talk shows where he gets five minutes to give his spiel on economic growth and discuss legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
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While back in the real world:

The Truth Matters

A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks by Bruce Bartlett just came out and a link above leads to a listing of ‘Reliable news and statistics resources’ listed in the appendix. Below are notable excerpts.

Things That Matter to NJ Media

You can excerpt lines from Fawlty Towers to apply to almost any situation. For example*:
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Sums up perfectly how I feel every time a ‘journalist’ granted access to a politician on account of their fawning skills (and ability to masquerade them) brings up crucial topics like property taxes or pension underfunding without the wherewithal or inclination to pursue the answers because those issues are not of primary importance to them. For example here are some questions, the stump-speech answers, and we move on.

Do All Governments Lie?

In the last few days three things caused me to examine that question:

1. We are having a gubernatorial election in New Jersey where property taxes are the main issue that people care about while pension debt would be the main issue if it were explained properly yet there is no media coverage on these real problems;
2. I was interviewed by a journalism student at Ithaca College for a class assignment on citizen journalism; and
3. I saw this movie.

My conclusion: