The Jaffe Briefing - August 16, 2021
NOT IN NEW JERSEY – So, Gov. Phil Murphy is vacationing at his Italian villa. While we have not yet been invited to tour the lavish grounds and visit for a week or two, we can only assume it is lovely. Meanwhile, Republicans see his summer vacation as an opportunity. It is a great narrative: As New Jerseyans suffer from this lingering pandemic and teeter on economic disaster, our gazillionaire governor is even more out-of-touch while gallivanting in Europe. Republican challenger and “real guy” Jack Ciattarelli is proud to say he vacations in LBI with all the regular people; he roots for the Yankees and eats pizza the correct way. Interesting to see a Republican paint a Democrat as a hated one-percenter. So, we must ask: Is it wrong for Murphy to be rich? No. Is it wrong for him to take a vacation like the rest of us? Nope. Are the optics still terrible? Yes. Will any of this summertime, time-filling chatter mean anything by Election Day? Of course not.
DOWN THE SHORE – We see the beach as a great place to nap. The New York Times sees it differently, describing our simple slice of heaven as an alluvial coastal plain stratified with quartz and glauconite sands, silt, clay and at least eight different aquifers going down beyond 6,000 feet before a slab of bedrock formed around 500 million years ago. Wow, what a great way to throw geology all over our oasis. Moreover, the newspaper’s brainiacs are also saying the sea level is rising at the Jersey Shore at twice the global average. Yet, we don’t care. That’s evident in the fact that 4,500 homes, worth $4.6 billion, were built in New Jersey between 2010 and 2016 in areas that will likely flood once a decade, beginning in 30 years or so. Yawn. Pass the sunscreen, ok?
STATEWIDE – In a shiver down the spine of any parent, state education officials are urging school districts to prepare remote instruction options for students who need to quarantine, the Record reports. Sure, we all know about the governor’s mandate that every K-12 school district offer full-time, in-person instruction with no remote option for parents who want to keep their students at home. Yet – and a big YET – local school officials are rightfully concerned about the COVID numbers, especially for unvaccinated, younger students. State education officials agree, as the latest directive says districts “are strongly encouraged to immediately provide virtual or remote instruction to those (quarantined) students in a manner commensurate with in-person instruction.” So, once again, school districts need to prepare for those dreaded Zoom sessions, just in case, despite the fact school must be in-person. Confused?
BRIEFING BREATHER
Jellyfish don’t age and never die unless killed.
STATEWIDE – We keep hearing about the extra $6.2 billion the state received in pandemic aid from the feds. So, why are New Jersey’s businesses still getting slapped with a $250 million hike to shore up the unemployment insurance payroll tax? Weren't all the pandemic relief funds meant for, well, pandemic relief? On Friday the 13th, the state sent out a lovely note to business owners about new and exciting increases to contribution rates, as the state works to build up its coffers. The higher rates kick in Oct 1, as part of a three-year plan for employers to pay a total of $1 billion in unemployment tax. As business leaders note, this tax is not on income, profits or assets, but on actual jobs. If the federal cash is there, why penalize the state’s job creators?
JERSEY CITY – Not that long ago the Newport Centre Mall was considered a linchpin for a glorious downtown renaissance. In fact, when it opened in October 1987 featuring the Smurfs, we were there to check out the Sam Goody and see what was new and oversized at Benetton. But, today, the mall doesn’t seem to be part of the future. A draft of a new Jersey City master plan recommends a downtown without the mall as a way to open access to the waterfront, the Jersey Journal reports. Replaced with a traditional city street grid, the land could be home to even more marvelous condos and restaurants, rather than this 1.1-million square foot, Reagan-era behemoth.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
GRANBURY, TX – A local father is now stuck back in his teens. (No, this isn’t one of those tired movies about yet another guy who goes back in time.) The man is suffering from what appears to be a rare brain disorder in which he woke up one morning and thought he was a kid. It seems that 20 years of his memory was wiped away, including his marriage and the birth of his daughter, now 10. The 36-year-old man woke up next to his wife and had no clue who she was or where he was and wondering if his parents would catch him with this strange, older woman. His wife then had to convince him he wasn’t kidnapped and that she was, in fact, his wife. Then, he looked in the mirror, wondering why he was so old and fat. It took his parents to convince him he was the victim of “transient global amnesia,” blocking his short-term memory.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 2017 that Dallas officials were worried of a pandemic, after the West Nile Virus kills 17 people. A “state of emergency” is declared.
WORD OF THE DAY
Bromide – [BROH-myde] – noun
Definition: A commonplace statement
Example: A banal bromide like “trust the science” doesn’t do much to explain the sea rising at the Jersey Shore.
WIT OF THE DAY
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience - well, that comes from poor judgment.”
― A.A. Milne
BIDEN BLURB
“If you conclude my judgment is not the right judgment, I abide by that, but I want an opportunity to have an input.”
-Joe Biden
WEATHER IN A WORD
Pleasant