The Morning Briefing - January 12, 2015
GREEN BAY - With the thankful defeat of the Dallas Cowboys yesterday at the hands of the Green Bay Packers, it is time for sports fans to say goodbye to Gov. Chris Christie and that orange sweater that has consumed headlines. No more coverage of the governor entering out-of-state football stadiums or hugging an old man in a luxury box and no more feisty debates over whether he will travel via private jet or squeeze into a coach seat. It is time to focus again on the real things: like the state's high property taxes, broke transportation fund, bloated pension obligations and the fact that most New Jerseyans can't afford to live here anymore. Right?
BACK IN TRENTON - Well, maybe. When Gov. Chris Christie makes his fifth-annual "State of the State address" tomorrow, it will be interesting to see who his audience will be. Will his message be crafted for the 8.8 million constituents he is supposed to be serving in New Jersey, or will he be providing the national media a glossed-over, happy recap of all his wonderful accomplishments that have apparently controlled property taxes, funded transportation projects, solved the pension mess and made the state more affordable? In either case, for a governor who has spent plenty of his second term unofficially campaigning for President, tomorrow's performance will show whether or not his greatest interest is New Jersey.
PISCATAWAY - When the Saint Francis "Red Flash" of some unknown athletic conference from some unknown town in Pennsylvania came to the Rutgers Athletic Center on Dec. 20 and whupped the Rutgers basketball team, well, it screamed another "Season Over." But if you happened to be flipping around the channels last night - looking for a sports channel not showing Gov. Chris Christie - you could have caught the best come-from-behind victory of the year: Rutgers beating the Number 4 team in the country - Wisconsin. Stunned silence. Some tears. And, finally, a huge smile.
Fun fact:The highest ranked team Rutgers had previously beaten was No. 6 Virginia. That was in February, 1982.
ATLANTIC CITY - If you are going to spend eternity in hell, you might as well bring an air conditioner. That might be the rationale of the thieves who stole the central air conditioning unit from the Greater Holy Trinity Baptist Church on Saturday, the Press of AC reports. Cops note temperatures were in the teens at the time of the theft. Perhaps these guys thought it was a heater; won't they be surprised.
STATEWIDE - All the water we lose from New Jersey's leaking, aging pipes before it even reaches the consumer is costing millions of dollars each year in revenue. NJSpotlight reports between 20 and 22 percent leaks out because of 100-year-old pipes rusting away. But to stop all these leaking profits comes with a steep price tag: an estimated $8 billion. A website has been set up to alarm local officials about the volume of water losses under the street. Great; but can taxpayers afford to get soaked?
TRENTON - Do we really want the local cops determining the duration of yellow lights? There is a proposed bill banging around Trenton that would allow municipalities to alter the yellow light length as a "safety measure." It calls for a four-second minimum yellow light and as long as seven seconds at intersections where traffic speeds exceed 55 miles an hour, WBGO reports. It seems any police department with some budget shortfalls could just tinker with the timing of the lights and enjoy the windfall; the legislation would have to be airtight to ensure no abuse of power.
TRENTON - It's the bill that hunters have been poised and ready for: A proposal that would allow them to do some shootin' on public property on Sundays, allow bow-hunting on federal military bases and permit more trappers to catch beaver. The Senate's Environmental Committee considers all this today, with environmentalists saying now is not the time to be all half-cocked.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
SALEM, S.D. - No one was lovin' it when 500 pounds of McDonald's french fries spilled onto the road during a six-vehicle pile-up in a snow storm in McCook County. America's favorite and most-read newspaper - The Argus Leader - reports emergency personnel in southeast part of South Dakota (translation: a guy named "Carl") spent Friday morning scraping the frozen fries off Interstate 90 with his plow.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 2013 that the air was deemed so contaminated in Beijing that the government said breathing it could be hazardous to your health - as if there were a viable option.