The Jaffe Briefing - June 21, 2022
OFF THE RAILS – NJ Transit is back in the news, after the rail agency was forced to cancel all trains during rush hour on Friday night. Sigh, and why? NJ Transit's locomotive engineers didn’t show up, causing 80 trains to vanish off the board. Engineer call-outs were nearly triple the rate of an average weekday, affecting more than 100,000 commuters. There were 481 engineers, blessed with steady jobs and health benefits, that refused to work over the weekend, continually punishing rail commuters. A federal judge ordered engineers back to work on Sunday, slamming the union for the work stoppage and warning engineers they could face fines and jail time if shenanigans continue.
STATEWIDE – Save the farmer. Many of us don’t think about how inflation is impacting the state’s farmers, seeing enormous spikes in fertilizer and fuel. By the time that blueberry finally arrives in your supermarket, and then you grouse about the price, many others have already sweated through inflation just to get it to you. NJ Spotlight tells the story of a Whitehouse Station farm, a family-owned business that has grown fruits and veggies for 11 generations. Costs at the farm have spiked 30% since last year. There’s a bill in the state Legislature to allow farmers to get some small tax breaks. But for these farms to stay in business, prices need to go up, up, up. The rest of us will pay, to the fault of no one.
WESTWOOD – Pack journalists blindly run to the newest shiny thing, writing virtually identical stories and wondering why no one reads them. And then you find a gem in today’sStar-Ledger: reporting on the last remaining Kmart in the state. This was the schlock store that you were embarrassed to shop in; it could be social suicide in your middle school if you were spotted there. (Yet you never wondered why the other kid was there.) Some great description of the place in the Ledger: “a zombified version of the once-omnipresent franchise wading toward its final Blue Light Special.” The reporter noted the empty shelves, Valentine’s Day cards being sold in June and an entire corner of the store bereft of any merchandise. “Yet one aisle remained full: the DVD section, a format made obsolete by the Internet – just like Kmart.” Again, terrific, fresh writing.
BRIEFING BREATHER
The opposite side of a die will always add up to seven.
CAMDEN – It’s called the Cherry Hill Shuffle, and Politico reports it is a tried-and-true way for political machines to keep in power during a transition from one candidate to another. It takes some explaining; let’s use an example: On Friday, Camden Commissioner Carmen Rodriguez announced she had resigned several days before the June 7 primary to take a job as the new county executive schools superintendent. No one had a clue she resigned and just assumed she was seeking another term, as her name was on the ballot. The shuffle: Elected officials quietly resign just before their term ends so their political party chooses an interim successor who then runs in the powerful position of an incumbent. The practice happens all over, but Camden County has mastered it.
FRANKLIN – There is plenty of pride in this Sussex County town, just not, apparently, in Pride Month. Perhaps taking its cue from the Sussex County Board of Commissioners, which replaced "Freedom For All" in its proclamation for Pride Month, the Borough Council has twice tabled a resolution that would declare June as Pride Month, the New Jersey Herald reports. The resolution was first set for a vote in late May and then at last Tuesday’s meeting, when no action was taken on a no-brainer resolution. It is now back on the agenda for June 28, with a couple of council members grumbling about how Franklin is supposed to be inclusionary and, honestly, WTF. Meanwhile, at town hall, the Pride flag is nowhere to be seen.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
SHELBYVILLE, Ky. – There are not many family restaurants in rural Kentucky that make national news these days. But none of those roadside dives can hold a candle to the Claudia Sanders Dinner House, a restaurant created by KFC founder Harland Sanders for his wife in 1959. The restaurant hit the market this week, offering the nearly 25,000-square-foot restaurant / banquet hall building on three acres. Anyone interested in buying the site also would get the trademark and likeness of the Claudia Sanders name – if that has value – as well as memorabilia from the Sanders family and the 5,000-square-foot homestead where the KFC founder lived, likely with plenty of chickens. There’s no sale price listed for this package, but any offer better be finger lickin’ good.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 2015 that Amazon joins eBay in removing all items depicting the Confederate flag. (If you search for it today, the mega-retailer will try to sell you the stars and stripes.)
WORD OF THE DAY
Emeritus – [ih-MEH-ruh-tus] – adjective
Definition: Holding after retirement an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service
Example: One day, maybe I’ll retire with the title of “Junior Dishwasher Emeritus.”
WIT OF THE DAY
“Negative results are just what I want. They're just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don't.”
-Thomas Edison
BIDEN BLURB
“Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.”
-Joe Biden
WEATHER IN A WORD
Changing