The Morning Briefing - June 1, 2015
EAST RUTHERFORD – Good news for football fans who try to sneak a drink into MetLife Stadium: security officials are installing walk-through metal detectors at all gates this week to expedite fans getting to their seats (and concession stands.) That means there will be no more pat-downs. A question of which we will never know the answer: How does this new security measure affect beer sales?
TRENTON – If you are a gangbanger or carjack people for a living, some members of the Assembly don’t consider you to be a strong candidate for gun ownership in New Jersey. The Assembly's Law and Public Safety committee is set to vote today on a measure that would prevent you from buying or owning guns, although one must think you have very little interest in being the legal owner of anything.
FORKED RIVER – Unclear which kid will be first to raise his hand and ask to meet Homer Simpson, as more than 300 school children head to the Oyster Creek nuclear plant today as part of the “third-annual education day.” Students will be there until 2 p.m., or until Mr. Burns decides to release the hounds.
TRENTON - The governor's latest proposal to pay into the state's fledgling pension system would be more than double what previous administrations have done... but would nevertheless be far from this year's required payment stipulated in his own reform law. NJ Spotlight reports that an upcoming state Supreme Court ruling on public-employee pension funding will determine whether the state must make the mandatory $2.25 billion payment into the pension system this fiscal year or whether the administration can get away with a proposed $681 million contribution. The governor also wants to extend the road to pension system solvency to 10 years, up from the previously-proposed seven years, a move, Democrats say, would cost the state more than $12 billion over the next 30 years. The governor's solution? Cut public employee health benefits and use those savings for the transportation trust fund, er, affordable housing trust fund, er, pension system.
IN THE MEDIA
STATEWIDE – Well, it’s official: computers are replacing writers. CNBC is reporting one of its Top 50 “Disruptors” of 2015 is a Chicago-based company that uses computer algorithms to write news items and other stuff that people currently pay us to handle. We’d name the company, but why rush the inevitable, as the MacBook Air can now use the program to pump out better prose than we could ever concoct. Imagine a world without typos, maddening inaccuracy and dangling participles?? Damn you, progress!
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
MEDINA, Ohio – Charity begins at home. In the case of a 13-year-old Ohio boy it actually began in his grandpa's home. Cops accused the teenager of stealing $25,000 from his grandfather's house last month, then passing out $100 bills to his middle school classmates. The Medina Gazette reports the boy is charged with “theft from the elderly,” after taking his 83-year-old grandfather’s stash and giving away thousands of bucks before school officials began asking about a sizable, school-wide shopping spree.
WASHINGTON – An embarrassing report is to be released, courtesy of the AP, showing how more than 130 Nazis said danke to $20.2 million in Social Security benefits between February 1962 and January of this year. That’s when a long overdue law, called the “No Social Security for Nazis Act” finally kicked in – some 50 years too late. It’s part of a bigger story, in which an estimated 10,000 Nazis were able to quietly settle in America, goosestep into jobs, marry unsuspecting people who did not salute maniacal mass murderers and kept mum about those foggy years in the fatherland, say from 1939-1945 or whatever.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 2013 that Russia enacted a country-wide smoking ban in all public places. Yeah, good luck enforcing that law over more than 6.6 million square miles, most of it the frozen tundra of Siberia.
WORD OF THE DAY
Lagopodous – adjective
Definition: Having a foot with the same fur as a rabbit.
Example: “I like Mel and all, but I think our relationship is over. His constant need to tell the same stories, plus those lagopodous feet, are just too much to take.”