In the end, Lawrence Township voters made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with an 17.8 percent municipal tax hike, and they did so by voting in overwhelming fashion. By a 2-1 margin, voters nixed a 9-cent municipal tax rate increase -- which was on top of an approved 5-cent hike -- that the township sought to balance the 2012 municipal budget without further cutting staff or services. The Lawrence school budget also went down, though by a relatively narrow margin, in what school board President Laura Walters called "collateral damage." “Residents of Lawrence Township are concerned …

When Lowe’s home improvement chain bowed to pressure from a Florida conservative group last week and pulled ads from the television show “All-American Muslim,” it endorsed one of the more pernicious stereotypes in our culture—that Muslim is synonymous with terrorist. The controversy began last week when the Florida Family Association, a small activist organization, called for a boycott because the show distorts “the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values” (The New York Times). Letters and emails to sponsors followed and Lowe’s—and later Kayak, a…

Civil unions are a sham. Rather than address the state Supreme Court’s requirement that the state create a system of equal treatment for same-sex couples, civil unions have perpetuated the inequities that existed prior to civil union’s passage in 2007. “The New Jersey state constitution guarantees equal rights to all,” says Louise Walpin, of Monmouth Junction. “Yet we’re not receiving equal rights and something has to be done about it.” Walpin and her partner, Marsha Shapiro, are among seven couples who have filed litigation asking the state Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. The …

Emma Goldman was the spirit of rebellion.  That’s how the author Vivian Gornick put it to me recently. Gornick, author of Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life, says that the early 20th-century anarchist existed in a “state of rebelliousness against unearned authority” and would have stood with the protesters in Zuccotti Park in New York and elsewhere. “The question of social justice–she was born in imperial Russia–she could feel it everywhere,” Gornick says. “The whole word was in state of incipient revolution and it melded with her temperament.” Gornick, who will discuss her book and …

More Americans are in need than at any time in more than five decades. That’s essentially the takeaway from a federal report issued Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. As reported by The New York Times, 2.6 million new people were deemed to live in poverty in 2010, increasing the number of Americans living below the official poverty line to 46.2 million people—the highest in the 52 years the bureau has been keeping track. The report also found that median income fell in 2010 to its lowest level since 1997, “the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for …

There are two ways you can look at the news that New Brunswick’s unemployment rate is lower than other New Jersey cities. You can, as some business owners and officials say, point to the city’s business climate and say the city knows what it takes to attract businesses. Or, you can acknowledge that the job mix in the city is the kind that has been less susceptible to the vicissitudes of the current economic malaise. Both views are accurate and good news for city taxpayers and residents, because it means that New Brunswick is weathering the current storm better than most while continuing its …

MTV used to be relevant. The network, which launched 30 years ago today with the apt “Video Killed the Radio Star,” helped usher in changes in the way visual arts were produced while also breaking cultural barriers in the music business. I remember watching it shortly after it launched here in Central Jersey – South Brunswick did not get cable until 1982 or 1983, so MTV was already established by the time we watched it for the first time in Annie’s living room in Kendall Park. We went out of our way to watch it back then. It was new and we were see videos from bands that were not on the radio…

For most of us today, there will be parades and flag-waving and lots of barbecues. But it is important that we take a few minutes to remember the origins of a day meant to honor America’s war dead. As David W. Blight writes in today’s New York Times, the holiday that we now know as Memorial Day began with a spontaneous commemoration of the end of the Civil War and a celebration by black workmen in Charleston, S.C., who went to the city racetrack where Union dead had been stored and “reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and …

Chris Hedges, a political columnist for Truthdig, told an audience at a Truthdig fundraiser last night that Osama Bin Laden was an American creation. The Princetotn resident, who is author of numerous books, including "War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning," had no love for Bin Laden and is not "in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately." But, and the "but" is key, he also views the American involvement in the Middle East and our chest-thumping nationalism in the wake of 9/11 as dangerous and ultimately self-defeating. Our …

The battle over how the state should pay for its schools has become a battle over who should pay to balance the state's budget. The Christie administration, in its last two budgets, has made a conscious decision to slash education funding, meaning that it consciously opted not to fund the state's three-year-old school funding formula -- a formula upheld by the court just two years ago. Gov. Chris Christie said shorting the funding formula was necessary to balance the state's budget and return the state to fiscal health. And his administration is now arguing--correctly--that forcing the state …

Democrats are happy with the new legislative map approved by the state's redistricting commission, for no other reason than it is likely to preserve the party's control of both houses of the state Legislature. Republicans are angry about it for the very same reason. And the people of Princeton have to be shaking their heads. The new map moves the two Princetons into the 16th District, away from its natural political connections in Mercer County and into a decidedly Republican district composed mostly of Somerset and Hunterdon counties. The new district, which also includes South Brunswick …

Nearly everyone in the state agrees on one thing: We cannot continue on the fiscal path we have been traveling. It is, as Gov. Chris Christie told a packed crowd in Hillsborough on Wednesday, “unsustainable.” The problem is that there is no agreement on how to construct a new path. New Jerseyans pay more in taxes – all taxes – per capita than any other state and our average property tax bill is the highest in the nation as well. But we also have to admit that we get a lot for what we are paying, more than they get in most of the low-tax states. Our schools – while wildly unequal – are among …

Budget discussions in Washington could have real impact right here in Central Jersey. The president’s proposal cuts about a billion dollars from the Housing and Urban Development budget, including $300 million from the Community Development Block Grant program, which provides cash to local governments to provide housing. Republican proposals call for more extensive cuts to the entire HUD program – including a dramatic $100 billion from fiscal year 2011 (the current budget year). The block grant cuts could mean rent hikes or service cuts at some federally funded facilities at a time when need …

Every budget has its winners and losers and the budget the governor unveiled Tuesday is no exception.  According to the governor, the winners are the state’s taxpayers who finally have someone in the Statehouse willing to put the state’s fiscal house in order. The only losers, in his mind, are those who deserve to lose – the unions who represent greedy state and local workers who are making the state unaffordable. A closer look at the budget, though still cursory, reveals something else. It shows a different list of winners and losers than the one the governor has proclaimed. That’s no …

I’m having some trouble with the math. Gov. Christie is proposing to cut the state budget by 2.6 percent, but he says he’s increasing aid nominally to schools and keeping it stable for towns. He’s increasing spending on hospitals, college aid, capital projects and tax relief, and yet the over all budget is down. Someone help me with the math. The budget is smaller than last year, but only if you include the federal stimulus money the state received and that Christie has criticized repeatedly.  If you back out that funding – and the programs it paid for – then spending is up. You also have to …

Gov. Chris Christie wants to fix public education by destroying it. Since taking office in January 2010, the governor has used his vast rhetorical skills to paint the state’s teachers and its education establishment as being impediments to school improvement. And he has proposed an agenda designed to remake public schools to fit a conservative mindset that has little use for the public sector. In his first budget last year, the governor slashed school funding and then delighted in the defeat of a majority of school budgets across the state. And it is likely that he will do the same again this…

There is no doubt that the state needs to do more to educate students in poor areas, but a bill making its way through the state Legislature is not the answer. The Opportunity Scholarship Act - which has been approved by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee and the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee and awaits further committee hearings and a vote of the full Legislature - would grant tax credits to corporations that make contributions to designated nonprofit agencies tasked with providing scholarships to low-income students who attended “chronically failing” …

Fact: The state of New Jersey faces a massive shortfall in its pension accounts -- a $54 billion hole.Fact: Governors going back (at least) as far as Christie Whitman have shorted the pension fund, turning the payment into a fungible budget balancing tool that, as I wrote way back in 1995, was going to come back to bite the state on its dysfunctional tuchus.So now, with a massive debt that will have to be paid, the politicians who helped create the problem want reform. But instead of requiring the state and local governments to pay what the actuarial figures show is needed to meet its long-…

When AOL and the Huffington Post announced their deal Monday, I was as shocked as anyone. Patch, after all, is part of AOL and soon Huffington Post would be, too. According to a company press release, AOL will pay $315 million for what it dubbed “the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website.” The purchase, as the company points out, creates a “combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world” and helps AOL move closer toward creation of “a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for …

The United States remains mired in an economic morass, despite the proclamations from economists who are supposed to know better. Yes, the stock market has rebounded. And yes, corporate profits are up. And yes, gross domestic product has grown. But average households have lost income over the last year, one in six Americans remain unemployed or underemployed and the jobs that are being created remain low-paid service-sector jobs. There are some interesting possibilities on the horizon—a push to create jobs in the alternative-energy sector, for instance—but these remain down the road. And now …