The Jaffe Briefing - February 21, 2020
TRENTON – Nothing is ever simple in New Jersey - even a bill designed to reduce food waste. The legislation – which has been banging around the halls of the Statehouse for four years – encourages that food waste is recycled, rather than thrown into our incinerators and quickly-filling landfills. The latest: one Assembly committee endorsed this bill, now it is in front of another committee. More amendments are being sought. More hearings. More debate. Counties are actually against the bill, as they love food waste going to their landfills and the glorious methane it creates as it decomposes. Assume this also has something to do with money, as it always does. The best solution, of course, is how to retrain New Jerseyans to significantly reduce our food waste, and get more of our excess food to those who could truly could use it.
TRENTON – When you open Little Jimmy’s report card and find the teacher has written “Jimmy is a role model for his classmates,” you know there will be plenty of A’s. And when the message is “As my many past reports have indicated, Bad Little Jimmy does not do his schoolwork,” it’s guaranteed there won’t be a B in sight. Which brings us naturally to the latest report card on New Jersey’s budget practices. NJ Spotlight reports that in its latest review of how New Jersey manages its books, the nonpartisan Volcker Alliance gives the state a couple of B’s but near-failing grades in several categories. New Jersey doesn’t make it to the head of the class in any category. We’re talking a report card peppered with D’s. Not exactly college material.
BEACH HAVEN – It’s unclear where we will now buy our LBI sweatshirts, LBI ashtrays, LBI cork screws and other LBI novelties, with word that Hand’s department store will be closing after 70 years on the Boulevard. Sure, every Labor Day, we saw the sign that read “Everything Must Go!,” but the easy assumption was always that Hand’s would be back there, every Memorial Day, trying to sell things at full-price, before the July 4 sales, the terrific August sales and the super-terrific Labor Day sales. Hand’s is set to close in April, The Sandpaper reports, after making it through another cold, quiet winter with only the blinking traffic lights showing any life. The owner is retiring and selling the land, certainly for a pretty penny. So now it the time for the deepest, deepest discount – seriously, this time.
BRIEFING BREATHER: Shakespeare is quoted 33,150 times in the Oxford English dictionary.
PRINCETON – “Period-palooza” isn’t for the prudish or the squeamish. Nope. It’s a four-day “celebration of menstrual equity,” starting Monday at
RUNNEMEDE – An unusual piece of modern-day American history is up for grabs for the right price, of course. A South Jersey auction house got its hands on a copy of the official federal document urging Congress to impeach President Donald Trump, and it is autographed by Trump himself. Auctioneer Ken Goldin tells CBS News that his auction house acquired the House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Report from “somebody within the Republican Party” who got it autographed by the president on Dec. 18, the same day Trump became only the third president to get impeached. Goldin says the twice-authenticated report could fetch anywhere from $50,000–$150,000 during the online auction that ends Saturday. And we thought this document wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
LONDON – Some modern medical marveling in London, as a neurosurgeon had a professional musician play her violin while he poked around her brain to remove a large tumor. There’s even video of this, as King’s College Hospital surgeons work on the 53-year-old patient’s brain while she performs scales and harmonies. Doctors were deeply concerned the surgery would affect her fine motor skills, so they devised the idea for a mini-concert. Doctors were able to remove 90% of the tumor; the musician now heads back to the Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra for more performances.
MIAMI – Please, please, look at us. That’s the message from Burger King. The company has released its latest advertisement campaign in the fast-food wars, hoping to, well, break the mold by showing its signature Whopper covered in disgusting mold. The key message in all of this: There will no longer be artificial preservatives in the burger. You can check out a fascinating time-lapse of a decaying burger on Twitter as it ages each week. Unclear how this campaign sells more food, as it would seem most Whopper-eating people aren’t calorie counters that consider their bodies to be pristine temples. But, hey, for the moment, we are now paying attention to Burger King.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 1997 that the “Empire Strikes Back, Special Edition” debuts, allowing movie-goers the opportunity to pay full price for a film they’ve seen 200 times on VHS.
WORD OF THE DAY
WIT OF THE DAY
TODAY'S TRUMPISM
“You know I'm totally off-script right now. And this is how I got elected, by being off-script. True.”
WEATHER IN A WORD: Brrr
THE NEW 60
A Jaffe Briefing Exclusive
by Andy Landorf & John Colquhoun
