Menendez No More

I am seriously thinking of voting in the New Jersey Democratic primary this coming June.

No, not for President - Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee, and the New Jersey presidential primary is worthless anyway, because it's so late.  No, I am seriously thinking of voting in the New Jersey Democratic primary to deny incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Menendez another term.

After he was indicted for accepting gifts from a halal meat distributor and providing sensitive information to the Egyptian government, it became clear that Menendez must go, and if he won't go, the Democratic voters of New Jersey have to get him out before he loses to a Republican in the 2024 general election.  I plan to vote for either New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy or U.S. Representative Andy Kim (not to be confused with the guy who had a hit with "Rock Me Gently" in the seventies)  

I have had enough with Robert Menendez and his shameless shenanigans.

And if we're going to drain the swamp - and New Jersey has plenty of those . . . 

. . . hey, let's get serious!

Robert Menendez Must Go

I have long been resigned to the fact that New Jersey is one of the least cool states in the Union, what with its run-down industrial cities, its loudmouth proles, a state turnpike that has wracked the nerves of many a hardened driver, and once-bucolic farmland developed into plastic-jive housing shopping malls (and Muzak fills the air from Livingston to Little Falls).  In other words, we're like Ohio.  But at least, I thought, we don't have a scumbag like James David Vance representing us as the voice and conscience of the state.

And of course, I was wrong.

Robert Menendez and his wife Nadine - who is his second wife, not his first wife, his first wife being the mother of his daughter Alicia - have been indicted on bribery charges.  He was discovered to have cash in his suits and gold bars in his house.  Menendez has been accused of attempting to sway the President Biden's choice of the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey to benefit a businessman and attempting to pressure the Department of Agriculture to protect a contact's monopoly on supplying halal (the Islamic equivalent of kosher) meat to the United States.

Despite the fact that Senator Menendez, a Democrat, is innocent until proven guilty, the evidence pretty much proves it in the court of public opinion.  The evidence is so overwhelming that U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (Ohio). John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), and Peter Welch (Vermont) have called for his resignation.  Plus several other Democratic senators, including New Jersey's other Senator, Cory Booker.  Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, however, won't call for Menendez to resign, apparently because he thinks that a tainted and disgraced Menendez is the best bet to keep his Senate seat in New Jersey Democratic. 

Uh, Chuck?  This is New Jersey!  We have qualified Democrats for the Senate coming out of our ears! 

It's over for Bob.  The sooner he gets out of the Senate and stops disgracing the senate with his gross indiscretions, the better.  Because you know it doesn't look good for him when his daughter - a regular MSNBC host of a program about Hispanic issues - suddenly disappears from the airwaves.

By the way, did you know that only thirteen U.S. Senators have been indicted in the chamber's 234-year history, and Menendez is the only U.S. Senator to be indicted twice?

You Can't Please Anybody

The school shooting in Florida this past week - on February 14, 89 years to the day after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, which only goes to show you how mass shootings in this country are nothing new - have politicians demanding that something be done about gun control.  Martin O'Malley has been demanding that something be done for years.

I'm not going to comment on the Parkland shootings per se because I can't say any more about school shootings that I haven't already said.  But I would like to look at O'Malley's position on guns, if only to remind voters that we could have had a President who would have addressed the issues.  O'Malley promoted in the 2016 presidential campaign a plan to expand safeguards to all gun purchases, require a background check for every individual gun purchase, require fingerprint-based licenses for transfers and purchases, and mandate safety training and waiting periods for gun purchases. He also advocated an assault weapons ban (which he pushed through as governor of Maryland), a program for the government to work with gun manufacturers to stop the illegal trafficking of firearms, and stronger incentives for law enforcement to  uphold such measures.

It's this stand on firearms that has made O'Malley Public Enemy Number One with the National Rifle Association.

You'd think O'Malley would get plaudits for his gun policy from his fellow Democrats.  Well, he probably would - if he could only get past questions about his public-safety record as mayor of Baltimore. 

Jayne Miller of Baltimore TV station WBAL-TV has reported that two members the Baltimore Police Department's  Gun Trace Task Force, who were supposed to get illegal guns off the street, would steal money and drugs from drug dealers targeted by the force.   They were convicted on charges of racketeering and robbery.  Although this corruption has been going on since O'Malley left the mayor's office in Baltimore to become governor of Maryland in 2007, and although the Baltimore police were already one of the most corrupt police departments in urban America before O'Malley became mayor in 1999, this story simply gives O'Malley's critics more opportunities to go after his criminal-justice record - and how his failure to reform the Baltimore Police Department has led to the lawlessness in the city that disproportionally affects people of color.  

In other words, the NRA hates him, but the people whom O'Malley should have as allies don't think too much of him either.

Again, Martin O'Malley has devoted his life of public service to making his city and his state as safe and as free of violence as possible, but he was only able to do so much as mayor of Baltimore and than as governor of Maryland.  He pursued his policies in the interest of the greater good, but some problems, especially in urban America, can't be solved in a single year or even in a single tenure of office.  And while he did what he thought was right when it came to public safety, knowing that his policies weren't going to be popular with everyone, he was somehow unable to satisfy anyone. 

Martin O'Malley knows what to do about gun violence, but if he were President today, he couldn't do it alone . . . which is pretty much what he is now.  So why do I continue to support him for President in 2020 when not too many people seem to be interested in the idea?  I think of O'Malley as someone who's ahead of his time, and I'm hoping that by the 2020 presidential campaign, his time will catch up with him.   

Menendez Mistrial

After all the speculation that New Jersey Democratic lawmaker Robert Menendez's U.S. Senate seat was in trouble due to his corruption trial, Menendez walked out of the federal courthouse in Newark a free man when the judge declared a mistrial. 

The jurors - one of whom could have been me - decided that Menendez was guilty of no more than helping out a friend,  the friend happening to be a wealthy optometrist, but that Menendez's actions probably weren't illegal.  That's it, and that's all.  No verdict.  So it looks like Menendez will be able to serve out the remainder of his Senate term, which expires in January 2019, and not have to worry about serving a term of a different sort.   

But he might not get another term in the Senate.  Menendez's poll numbers in New Jersey are so low, they almost rival those of Chris Christie.  New Jersey hasn't elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972, but, given that New Jersey Republicans have won half of the twelve gubernatorial elections since then, don't be surprised if they are competitive against Menendez in the state's 2018 U.S. Senate election.

And I can definitely see outgoing lieutenant governor Kim Guadagno going for Menendez's seat.

Why?  Because just as Christine Todd Whitman's failed Senate bid in 1990 was a dry run for her successful gubernatorial run in 993, Kim Guadagno's failed gubernatorial bid could be a dry run for Menendez's Senate seat.  Republicans who lose elections don't quit running for office until they get elected to something or can't run any more, a tradition started by Harold Stassen.

But of course, November 2018 is a long way off, even as November 2017 comes to a close today.  Menendez (below) has time to get his mojo working again.  A week in politics is a life time and a year in politics is an eternity.  A month ago, people were talking about Menendez being in jeopardy; now they've forgotten about Menendez and started talking about Al Franken being in jeopardy.     

What would I have done had I been on that jury?  I doubt that I could have reached a verdict as well.

International Olympic Corruption

A friend of mine from my writers' group alerted me to a report on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that appeared on "Real Sports," the HBO Sports show hosted by Bryant Gumbel.  The report depicted how the IOC has an unsavory interrelationship between itself and countries that bid for the Olympics.  See, the countries (cities, not countries, are supposed to vie for the Games, but we all know that's a lie) bend over backwards to satisfy IOC members and their greed.  They don't so much bribe members of the committee as they are blackmailed by them.

The problem turns out to have be much worse than the nasty wheeling and dealing that brought the Summer Games to Atlanta in 1996 (how else could the Olympics have been been held in a city more defined by the 285 beltway than by anything resembling a downtown?) and the Winter Olympics to Nagano, Japan in 1998 (no skiing facilities, no sledding amenities, just craggy mountains that even the local monkeys wouldn't roam across).  IOC potentates are expected to be wined and dined at considerable expense and receive all sorts of favors, causing bidders to spend a lot of time, money and energy on the Games.  This was supposed to be cleaned up after all of the bribery that plagued the organizing committee for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics (and was rectified by Mitt Romney when he took it over), but no, it still goes on.  The money spent on the facilities for the Games comes out of public amenities for the poor and the middle class.  That's why Sochi was still a mess after the 2014 Winter Olympics and why Rio de Janeiro has become even more uninhabitable for the locals.  

Maybe Bill Kristol was right back in 2009 when he said Chicago didn't need the 2016 Olympics.  Lord knows Chicago needs a whole lot of other things.  Like a mayor who's not in the pocket of big business.    

And who makes most of the money for the Games themselves?  I'll give you a hint; it's not the host cities.  The host cities, in fact, are left holding the bag for maintenance costs for those same facilities.  The IOC gets walks away with most of the profits.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach (below), who was a gold-medal fencer for West Germany at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was supposed to do something about all this, and given that he is a former athlete himself, the athletes were expected, so I have been led to understand, to benefit from his presidency.

Yeah, well, without the athletes, there's no Olympic movement.  It's supposed to be all about the athletes, because it's the athletes who compete, it's the athletes who break world records and all that, and it's the athletes we all revere, not the IOC members . . . and it's the athletes we all develop silly celebrity crushes on; I wonder if you all know who I'm talking about? ;-)  Ha ha, I have a ladyfriend who loves to check out Ryan Lochte, and not necessarily when he's swimming.

So I hope Bach gets all that and pursues some real reform in the IOC.  Because it is indeed all about the athletes.  After all, despite the fact that Bach was an Olympian himself, no one tuned into the opening ceremony at Rio to check out Bach's sexy bod. :-p       

And if Los Angeles does lose its bid for the 2024 Games, that will mean that Angelenos didn't compromise their integrity - or, at least they didn't compromise it as much as the residents of the city with the winning bid.