Great news: A poll shows casino gambling in North Jersey to be failing big time

Johnny has never made any bones about his distaste for a casino anywhere near Jersey City. We pay, the owners get rich and get our money even if we don't go to the casino in the form of abatements. Well, to that voting end of things, a new Farleigh Dickinson Public Mind poll shows 57% opposed to a casino opening via ballot box in North Jersey. Only 35% approve of a casino up north.

Nice to see common sense hasn't left a majority of taxpayers.

More squabbling over casinos between north Jersey and south Jersey

A group of south New Jersey interests are trying to keep north New Jersey from getting casinos (you can already gamble your brains out on your smartphone app or ipad app already) and have raised money and a stink in trying to keep their share of the pie. There's a great article today on the forces marshaling down south to defeat any plan for casinos up north.

Once again Johnny will say that you can build the greatest casino that ever was with golden fountains and silver elevator cars but the minute one opens in nay borough other than Staten Island, it'll be closed within the year. NYC opens a casino, the north Jersey one just closed.

NJ halfway house escapees number in the thousands and have ties to Governor Christie

Boy it's still nice to see good journalists doing good work these days. The New York Times story, with excellent follow-up by North Jersey's crack team have got a scoop about thousands of walk-away or halfway house escapees, some who have murdered New Jersey citizens while out. The point being raised is this; these escapees are in a PRIVATE system being run by big donors to Chris Christie and touted by Christie himself. In fact the private system was have said to “mutated into a shadow corrections network” where drugs, gang activity and violence often go unchecked.

This has rather big implications for Governor Christie's furthering of his political career. One Michael Dukakis was undone by a similar story, Willie Horton in 1988. Dukakis as Massachusetts Governor released prisoners who robbed, raped and murdered citizens while out on furlough. These guys are not on furlough, no, they simply walk away from a program. One escapee, who murdered a woman once he was out, escaped from a halfway house being run by a top Christie adviser and former law partner William J. Palatucci.

It's mandatory reading kids, issues like these are important. It's how you know what your votes last time are up to.