The Jaffe Briefing - April 26, 2022

WOODLAND PARK – Yes, weed is legal. But not for you.  Woodland Park officials are telling their 120 municipal workforce to keep off the bong, or be fired. The Record reports Mayor Keith Kazmark has dashed off an interoffice memo, emphasizing that the Borough Council fully expects all workers to be on the straight and narrow. There will continue to be random drug testing of the police and DPW, while other workers would be tested if they seemed zoinked on the job. The mayor is especially worried about liability. If a guy gets stoned and then is called into work to drive a snowplow, is the town liable when he sideswipes a car? If you ask any lawyer, the answer would certainly be “Does the town have lots of insurance? Really? Oh, wow. Then, yes!”

STATEWIDE – This is you in 2019: “A crappy, three-bedroom house for $950,000? I’m in!”  And this is you in 2022: “Yeah, I really can’t afford that crappy three-bedroom house. I’m out!” That’s the trend in New Jersey, where foreclosure rates are reaching all new levels of ridiculousness. NJ 101.5 reports New Jersey trailed only Illinois for the highest foreclosure rates in the first fiscal quarter, as backlogs from the pandemic are beginning to clear. In our state, one in every 792 housing units was in foreclosure by the end of March – a 69% jump from the fourth quarter of 2021 and – get this – a 312% increase from this time last year. Many of the foreclosed homes were teetering on disaster before the pandemic; the courts just needed time to catch up, prompting such an alarming spike.

BRIEFING BREATHER

The inventor of Pringles is laid to rest in a Pringles can.

HOPEWELL – It looks like there will be many more mandated coffee breaks at the local Starbucks, the first in the state to join a union. Workers at the Hopewell location voted unanimously to join Workers United, with promises of better working conditions to offset all those union dues. Starbucks, now seeing about 200 of its retail spots filing paperwork for union elections, is now rushing to “listen” and “learn,” saying employers and employees are better as partners, without the need for a pesky union to get in the middle and muck it all up. Clearly, this brewing issue has been elevated from a Grande to a Venti, with concerns it could become a Trenta. Yet some workers still don’t give a frapp.

STATEWIDE – We like it here, but want to leave.  That seems the common opinion in ongoing polls. And the latest one from Monmouth University is no different.  New Jerseyans are masters of talking out of both sides of our mouths. Most people really like the quality of life here, when you consider education, safety, environment, etc. But then nearly 60% of us then say we would move out of here at some point, with only 38% indicating any interest in getting old and dying here.  Yeah, lots of whiplash here with divergent opinions. But, again, that’s Jersey.

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS

COCOA, Fla. – Little Johnny is coming home from school hungry. And that’s not sitting well with his mom, arrested for threatening to blow up the school unless the lunch ladies shovel more chow on her kid’s tray. The threat was left Feb. 3 in an anonymous voicemail to Cocoa High School, with the unhinged mom charged with making a false bomb threat and disruption of a school. Investigators quickly located the woman’s phone number in school records and a resource officer confirmed that her boy was arguing with a lunch lady on Feb. 3. when he asked for seconds.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

It was this day in 1954 that crazy party girl (and Michigan congresswoman) Ruth Thompson introduced federal legislation that would ban the mailing of rock n’ roll records, referring to the music as “obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy.”

WORD OF THE DAY

Touchstone – [TUTCH-stohn] – noun

Definition:  A fundamental or quintessential part or feature; a basis

Example: Rocky II was an immediate Box Office success in 1979; remaining a touchstone of sports-related movies, prompting this question: Could there be a sequel?

WIT OF THE DAY

“It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.”

-George W. Bush

BIDEN BLURB

“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”

-Joe Biden

WEATHER IN A WORD

Scattered