The Morning Briefing - January 28, 2015
BOUND BROOK - So much for encouraging entrepreneurship. Cops told two kids to stop handing out fliers Monday night that advertised their snow shoveling business. The Courier News reports that Bound Brook police - bound by the “state of emergency” - told the kids to go home. The newspaper noted the pair still managed to secure five gigs, earning $25-$40 a house, depending on the negotiation skills of each homeowner.
STATEWIDE - What was the blood-curdling chorus of agonizing screams early yesterday? No, not snow plow operators learning the “historic blizzard” was fizzling out. Rather, it was the pre-teens and others learning that Facebook and Instagram had suffered a “self-inflicted outage.” Luckily, Time reports, the hour-long glitch was an internal boo-boo, and not some cyber attack. The outage forced Twitter to come alive with the hashtag “facebookdown” to top trend. And then, with Facebook and Instagram once again operational, New Jersey heard a communal “aaaaaaah.”
JERSEY CITY - There are plenty of questions about emergency response for the blizzard that never was. Of course, it is easy to rip into NJ Transit, which halted service at 8 p.m. Monday night and figured to not be returning until Thursday. That caused a scramble among commuters, but NJ Transit did adjust well, running modified schedules all day yesterday. Any diversion from the routine schedule prompts the ire of commuters, but it seems the agency did the best it could with the lousy information it was given.
ELIZABETH - We are resigned to the fact that Big Brother is watching. But it is still disconcerting to learn when, where and how. The Wall Street Journal reports there is a license plate reader set up on the New Jersey Turnpike in Elizabeth for the feds to easily track the whereabouts of motorists. It is one of hundreds of similar readers stationed around the U.S. that law enforcement uses. Surprised? No. But now is not the time to become a drug mule.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL - Gov. Chris Christie - heading across the pond to England on Monday to shore up his international credentials, has found another quick way to pad the resume: meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin tomorrow in New York. Rivlin has little power compared with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, set to address Congress in March, but the Rivlin-Christie pow-wow and subsequent photo-op tomorrow will show our governor’s unwavering support of Israel. That should play well with billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who runs Las Vegas Sands Corp. He’s the guy who blew through $93 million in the 2012 election to get a Republican into the White House, NJ.com reports.
NEWARK - One growth industry in the city has been plowing your vehicle into a business and making off with the ATM. Following a spree in November, city police are reporting thieves drove a pick-up truck into two city businesses to steal the ATM machines early yesterday. The victims were Jersey Fried Chicken and Checkers, NJ.com reports. Apparently, none of the “sporks” were stolen as part of the crimes.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Message to residents: Don’t eat the dead fish found on the side of the road. The Belfast City Council noted thousands of mackerel were dumped out of a delivery truck. Enthusiastic locals, yelling “Holy Mackerel!” ran out with big bags and began scooping the fish - before passing cars pulverized them. One resident told AP that he scored 25 mackerel and reported they were off-the-boat fresh, adding, proudly, “I know fish.” City officials say the mackerel is now mixing with car exhaust and other pollutants, urging people to get their fish elsewhere - like from ponds.
IN THE MEDIA
The Washington Post is out with its list of the top local political reporters in the country, deemed the most “under-appreciated reporters in the political world” who “rarely get the attention of their colleagues at the national level but are often covering the very politicians and national trends that come to impact the broad political landscape.”
Congrats to: Michael Aron of NJTV, Matt Friedman and Chris Baxter of The Star-Ledger, Mark Bonamo of PolitickerNJ, Jill Colvin of the AP, Josh Dawsey and Heather Haddon of The Wall Street Journal, Melissa Hayes and John Reitmeyer of The Bergen Record, Dave Levinsky of the Burlington County Times and former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Matt Katz of WNYC. A couple of prominent names that deserve, in our opinion, to be on the list: veteran political observer Max Pizarro and up-and-comer Chase Brush, both of PolitickerNJ, David Cruz of NJTV and Charles Stile, the Bergen Record's astute and acerbic political columnist.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Apple is reporting record earnings today. But it was just one year ago that Apple was completely devastated by the fact that it “only” sold 51 million iPhones in fourth quarter 2013, as opposed to the 55 million iPhones that it had hoped to sell.