Geriatric Politicians Gone Wild!



Sheriff Gill Lugossy may soon be back in the saddle,   Mr. Lugossy who served as Mercer County's sheriff from 1976 to 1990 has indicated that he plans to return to the Sheriff's office after 20 years of retirement.



Yes it's true.  In a blast from the past, 74-year old Gill Lugossy told the Trentonian he is interested  in becoming Mercer County's next sheriff, since Sheriff Kevin Larkin resigned from the job last week due to personal reasons.  He says he has the support of the local Democratic Party and now all that remains is for Governor Christie to appoint him to the job.

The Republican governor is required to replace Sheriff Larkin with another Democrat according to state law.  What a perfect person for the job, from Christie's standpoint.  Lugossy will make the perfect caretaker since he is so old he probably won't stand for re-election when the job goes on the ballot next November and therefore the Democrats won't be able to benefit from having an incumbant on the ballot.

And of course, us taxpayers get the "benefit" of having Sheriff Hoveround back on the job.  I can just see him now chasing criminals down Broad Street in his electric wheelchair.

He is the perfect match for Trenton's new court administrator Nate Jones, a former elementary school principal and perenial city council candidate who also retired in early 1990s.

The Clown Show at Trenton's City Hall Goes On

Old Nucky Johnson has to be rolling in his grave right now.  The TV show  Boardwalk Empire brought the story of this county political boss who also doubled as the head of Atlantic City's Irish mob in the 1920s to a whole generation of Americans after his memory finally faded into history, making Nucky once again one of this country's most notorious gangsters.

 While the point is made in many gangster picture that Las Vegas does not have a single monument in honor of Bugsy  Siegel Theenforcer from New York that was sent to the West Coast by the Mafia and set up the first modern casino-hotel in Las Vegas.  That's right, not one museum, statue or even a plaque honors the memory of the man who created Sin City.  Well, Atlantic City is different.  Atlantic City's city council recently named a street named in honor of Enoch Johnson, the Republican County Committee chairman from the 1920s who wielded the kind of power even George Norcross III could only dream of having.  He also doubled as the head of Atlantic City's Irish mob, a criminal organization which even the Italian Mafia feared.  He used the power of the city and county governments to protect his gambling and bootlegging operations and keep the Italians and honest law enforcement officials at bay. 

When asked why City Council named a street after a gangster, one official commented that he was a positive influence which was responsible for the town's golden age as a resort.  He also said that Atlantic City always had its share of shady political figures and admitted that there may still be a few crooks in power now.  That's right.  Gangsters are part of the heritage of both gambling Meccas, it is just that the New Jersey city has the guts to admit it and embrace its past.  Yes it may just be honesty, but it is also a great marketing ploy.  Now tourists drawn to the town by watching Boardwalk Empire can walk down a real street named after Nucky and can see the Ritz Carlton Hotel where Nucky ran his real life empire.  It still standing on the boardwalk  near the Atlantic City Hilton and is now a condominium tower.

So why bring up Nucky in an article about the current situation in Trenton municipal government?  Well, Tony Mack is a different kind of colorful politician who is rapidly becoming notorious in his own way.  He may even inspire a new TV series, this one would be called How the Bleep Did He Get Elected. 

So far our new Mayor who took office this July has gotten the city into the news quite frequently.  He wanted to appoint a convicted felon and con man to the position of economic development director, but backed down when articles about the man's criminal record appeared in the newspapers.  His personal residence is in foreclosure proceedings.  He bought it in the early 1990s for a little over $100,000 and now owes well over $300,000 on it.  I know I bought mine for $83,000 in 1992 and now owe about $14,000.  Hey mayor!  Your mortgage is supposed to go down over time if you just make the payments and don't keep refinancing it.  I'm glad to know what when our city is running a large deficit, we have such a shrewd financier in charge.  He also got a second mortgage from a flea market vendor to finance his election campaign.  (Because no bank would lend him any more money, probably).

Besides these two blunders, he dismissed the former operator of the city water works and brought in a friend and supporter that was unfamiliar with the plant to operate it.  The new plant manager allowed the filters to clog up during a rain storm earlier this month.  This shut down the whole system and caused the reservoir to drain dangerously low before extra water was pumped in from a neighboring private water system.  When the city's pumps were finally turned on, an incorrect start-up procedure was followed which blew out a water main under a main thoroughfare in nearby Hamilton Township,collapsing the street and causing muddy water to flow to thousands of homes.  We had to boil our water for a week.

Perhaps you can't blame the following incident directly on the mayor, but he appoints the police director who IS responsible for the police department.  Earlier in the week it was revealed that a 25 year old cop was romantically involved with a 14 year girl and that he was charged with statutory rape.  The police officer in question was reassigned to desk duty and lost his right to carry a firearm until the matter is resolved.

Yesterday, an article appeared in the paper about municipal court judge Renee Lamarre Sumners, who was appointed to the municipal bench by Mack.  She, and court administrator Nate Jones have both refused to submit to police background checks, drug testing and fingerprinting.  Although Mr. Jones was not in the paper in Friday, I am going to comment on what I know of him first.

He was principal of Rivera Munoz elementary school in the late 1980s.  At the time I ran into him there as a substitute teacher, he was fairly old and had white hair.  He was a short, portly gentleman who had white hair and wore a Cheney University pin on his lapel.  He also was of the habit of carrying a baseball bat in the hallways.  He must have seen the Lean on Me movie too much.  Although he may have wanted to be like the principal in Lean on Me" he struck me as quite the opposite, basically I though he was lazy and not too bright.

I had a fourth grade class one day.  Normally the kids try to take control of the classroom when they get a substitute.  That a familiar time hone red tradition everywhere.  The way you nip it in the bud is sent the first two or three trouble makers to the Principal's office.  He usually scolds them, then gives them to another teacher to watch for the rest of the day.  Mr. Jones didn't do that.  He immediately sent them back and told me on the inter column to handle them myself and not to send any more.

That could have been a prescription for disaster, but it was June and the school wasn't air conditioned and I remembered a technique fron the nuns at St. Raphael's.  I shut the door and all the windows and told the kids they wouldn't be opened until I got quiet.  It worked.

But "sockless wonder" Nate wasn't satisfied.  He told me during lunch period to take the kids outside in the playground for the afternoon.  I followed instructions and they immediately jumped the fence and left the property for the rest of the day.

Since retiring in the early 90s, Nate has been a perennial candidate for West Ward city councilman, but never gets more than a few hundred votes.

I guess he helped Mr. Mack on his election campaign.  Nate had to be 60 back in the late 1980s.  That puts him over 80 now.  That man should be in a rest home, or at least at home on retirement.  Certainly, if he was a tired old man back in the 1980s, he hasn't gotten any more ambitious since.  Mack should have not brought him out of retirement.

Now for the judge.  We already have the mayor who can't pay his mortgage.  Now we got the judge who bounces checks and keeps getting her law license suspended for nonpayment of the licensing fee.  I guess financial deadbeats flock together like birds of a feather.


Sumners was put on the ineligible to practice law list in 2001, 2004 and 2006 for failure to pay her annual renewal fee to the state Lawyers Fund for Client P{protection.  She also missed her payment this year because she paid with a check that was returned to her for insufficient funds.

Since it is necessary for judges to be lawyers in good standing, it is likely that Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg will remove her from the bench for failing to meet the requirements for holding her job.

I was wondering why she didn't want a background check.  Our new judge can't be a judge because she is not really a lawyer allowed to practice in New Jersey.

I wonder what other surprises Mack has up his sleeve for us.

Which bring us back to Nucky.  Old Mucky may have been a crook, but he certainly was a smart man and an effective leader.  Mack doesn't have enough brains to run the toilet, let alone a city government.  And it is becoming more obvious each day.

No, Tony, you can't make a pimple on Nucky's ass.

A 19th Century Solution to a 21st Century Problem

The Colt 1860 Army Revolver was used by both sides on the battlefields of the Civil War.  Later, it saw action in the wild west.  It is fired using black powder and shoots a 45 caliber lead ball.  This is a real Colt, however you can also buy Italian-made replicas online without a New Jersey firearms ID for a little over $200, and lots of places will gladly ship one directly to your home.  These pieces really fire and would be a fine tool to deal with home invasions.

In the Trentonian an article appeared this week about a home invasion on Stuyvesant Ave. in Ewing.  The Ewing police said this was the second home invasion to happen there in recent days and the two may be related.

Home invasions are a common problem in Trenton.  Normally the perpetrators know the people they are robbing and the "victims" are involved in drugs or some other kind of criminal activity.  Suburbanites look at these reports and just laugh.  After all the victims brought it on themselves.

Except occasionally the victims are truly innocent.  Perhaps the invaders got the wrong address for the drug house of for the bodega owner that hides his tax-free loot in the safe in the closet.  Criminals have increasingly gone to breaking into occupied houses in states with gun control because they know the occupants will be unarmed.  They can terrorize the residents and force them to give up the locations of valuables, making the job easier than an ordinary burglary.

However wouldn't it be fun to disrupt the criminals' carefully orchestrated game plan.  Here is my fantasy.  I am sitting down in my living room munching on some chips and sucking down cold ones watching Cops.  Suddenly at around 11:00 PM I hear several loud kicks on my front door.  I reach for my weapon, a loaded 1860 Colt .45.  The front door burst open and three men dressed in black armed with silver handguns burst in. 

I pull my trigger at the door bursts open.  My gun belches a flash of smoke and flame over a foot long.  A heavy lead ball nearly a half inch round strikes the chest of the lead assailant.  The black-clad invaders are stunned.  They don't know what happened, but at first stop cold and turn white as sheets with fright.  The lead man topples over, His chest was struck by the heavy projectile, caving it in.  A stream of blood shoots out.  The others, scared as hell, turn and run.

Game over.  The score:  Homeowner 1, criminals 0.

Now here comes the hard part.  The police come.  I get arrested for unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.  After the interrogation, I get to spend the night in the police lockup, quickly make bail and return home. 

The news hits the paper.  Homeowner does the right thing and gives home invaders their just deserts.  The county attorney declines to take the case before a grand jury and your lawyer gets the judge to dismiss charges.

Now I know I live in the Nanny State where citizens need to be protected from themselves and can't be trusted with dangerous objects like guns, but wouldn't it be nice if the politicians would allow us to keep loaded black powder weapons in our homes for protection.

After a few cases of thugs getting blown to bits in the doorway, the bad guys will wait to their targets are out of the house before breaking in.  They would be too scared of breaking into any place with people at home.  After all, SOME homeowners WILL arm themselves and home invasions would then be too dangerous to contemplate.

The Eagle Has Landed, Don't Worry Corzine's Golden Pheasants Fared Well






This family man is none other than Hermann Goering, who was a long-time Hitler associate and head of the German Luthwaffe during the war.  He was also a poster child for what a top-level corrupt official can achieve for himself in a one-party state.  Despite being an absolute failure as an air force commander from late 1942 onward, the man who could not keep Stalingrad supplied and could not protect German cities from allied bombing raids kept his job.  He also managed to keep his ample belly filled with gourmet food, his arm well supplied with pure heroin and Carinhall, his palatial residence, well stocked with the best artwork the Nazi forces could steal.  To find out more about Goering, click here.     http://www.leninimports.com/hermann_goering.html

Top-level Nazi officials were sometimes referred to as "golden pheasants", after the golden eagles which appeared on their personal banners which often flew proudly from their cars, offices and residences.  The term also signified the lifestyle one could secure for themselves in such a position with a little guts and creativity.  True, some of the Nazi leadership was relatively honest when it came to stealing for personal gain.  Hitler and Himmler for example, led relatively modest lifestyles.  Others, like Goering above were less restrained when it came to using their position to secure whatever it took to satisfy their personal desires.

And of course, corruption did not just exist at the very top level in Berlin, it extended downward to the gauleiters and their underlings.  The Third Reich was not unique.  In the Soviet Union, the ruling elite also had their share of thieves that lived high off the hog while ordinary Russians suffered.

We have our own golden pheasants right here in New Jersey, however unlike Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, they must remain nimble enough to find new gigs once a new governor arrives on the scene and their politically-appointed positions come to an end.  Not every political appointee lost their position when Christie tool over last January.  That would have disrupted day-to-day government operations.  The new governor gradually replaced  some of the Corzine people with his own, while others left 'voluntarially", knowing their days on the job will soon be up if they chose to stay.

Since they initially flew into their jobs and must be prepared to someday fly away, all state political appointees are like birds.  However, within this group there are distinctions based on how important the position is to government operations and the political connections of the individual involved.  Some, like the graduate student Max who lost his job in my unit last July are like quail or sparrows.  They have no power and little value and can be tossed out on the street like last week's trash.  Others, well they are more like birds of prey.  In other words, very powerful, must be handled with care and are very able to fend for themselves.

Take for example our former Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development under Corzine, David J. Socolow.  Incidentally, his last name in Russian means "eagle".  He was asked to resign from his position when the new governor took office and was gone by the end of the day of the inauguration.  Don't feel too sorry for him, however.  He is now a Vice President of Pinnacle Foods in Cherry Hill.  This company purchased Birds Eye foods last year and also owns Vlasic Pickles, Log Cabin Syrup, Duncan Hines and Aunt Jemima among other food brands.

Perhaps you are wondering why this "bird" got to land in a top job at a food manufacturing company.  Probably not for his many years of experience in the food industry, do you think?  Well here's a hint.

Pinnacle moved to a new headquarters in Cherry Hill.  The company which was previously located at a smaller office in Cherry Hill had been shopping around with other states for incentives to move the office elsewhere.  The New Jersey Economic Development Authority responded by granting Pinnacle $1.1 million in tax incentives over 10 years to keep the headquarters in the state.  I don't know for sure, but I bet Mr. Socolow either was given the job as a reward for his part in securing this assistance or perhaps because the company sees value in his political connections.  You know, kind of like our banker genius right here in Mercer, Peter Inverso.  Perhaps his former position as a Republican state senator got him his job as Roma Bank CEO.

I also worked under other former birds which landed well.  Take for instance Yustina Saleh, who was Director of the state labor department's Division of Planning and Analysis under Corzine.  During the time she was employed by our agency she developed a product called Real Time Jobs in Demand which is a report prepared from an analysis of job listings posted on private job boards on the Internet.  In case you aren't aware, most people now check Internet job boards for available positions in the same manner they used to check newspaper want ads before the Internet largely replaced the newspaper ads.  Ms Saleh analyzed a list of listings obtained by a private company, Employon, which used web spidering software to obtain the listings.

In recent months, Ms. Saleh left her job at the labor department to accept a position at a private company called Burning Glass Technologies.  Burning Glass recently acquired Employon now has a contract with our labor department to develop and provide software for analyzing private job board listings, and matching candidates with jobs.  Gee, I wonder why they hired Ms. Saleh.  Maybe it was her good looks and not her contacts at the NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Now we are supposed to have an ethics policy for state employees that prohibits state workers from accepting positions with other firms where they can make use of knowledge of department procedures or contacts in state government.  I guess this only applies to the little guys, not to golden pheasants.

Remember that in the bird world, it is the sparrows and quail that starve or wind up on the dinner table while the eagles and golden pheasants get to feast and live large.

   



Don't Drink Shit and Die. How To Avoid Becoming Another Trenton Water Works Victim.



No, that's not coffee.  That's what came out of my cold water pipe at my house.  It seems the folks at the Trenton Water Works created a lot of drama when they forgot to have someone around during the rainstorm last weekend to change the filters at their treatment plant, and we all got a good dose of gook in our drinking water.  Although Mayor Mack now says it is safe to drink the water, trust me the problem is not over yet.

Just when you thought it was safe to drink the water, I come along and post this picture of the water I got out of a tap in my basement last night.  That was Friday evening, a day after I got an autodialer call from the mayor which said we no longer have to boil our water and that it is safe to drink.  I don't know, but on my part of Planet Earth, drinking water is supposed to be clear, not black.

As you can imagine, there is a little more to this picture and that the water that comes out of the spigots in the bathtub and sinks upstairs does not look quite as bad as this, but you would have to admit black stuff shouldn't be coming out of the drinking water pipes in any part of your house.

To bring everybody up to speed, here is what has been going on in River City which led to this crisis.

Last weekend, we had a heavy rainstorm which caused some local streams and the river to swell.  When this happens the water in the river gets very muddy.  Since the City of Trenton's water utility pumps its water directly from the river, this presents operational problems for the operators of the system.  Steps need to be taken to insure that sediment is properly removed from the water before it is delivered to homes and businesses, and this requires extra care during periods when the river is muddy.

Our new mayor, Tony Mack, who took office in July replaced the manager of the water works with a political crony who does not even live around here.  It seems nobody told the new guy about what to do when the river gets muddy.  He stayed home and left his cell phone off during the rain storm and could not be reached.  The old manager never had a problem during storms because he kept someone back at the filtration plant to monitor the situation and change out filters every hour or so.  That didn't happen this time, and the filters clogged up and the pumps shut down.

After several hours of no water being pumped into the system, the reservoir was drawn down and by last Saturday, the water pressure dropped down to practically nothing.  I was wondering why water flowed at a trickle from my bathtub.

Nothing was told to the public until Monday evening, when I got an auto dialer call telling me to boil my water.  According to the  Trentonian, the water works people were trying to rectify the problem of low water levels on Monday, but there was a series of screw-ups which led to the muddy water in the tap water.

First, a neighboring private utility, American Water, was advised to star pumping water from its system into Trenton's pipes, but this did not happen right away.  These is some dispute as to why this did not immediately happen, but it did not and that allowed pressure to fall further throughout Monday and some of the city's schools had to close because they did not have enough pressure to allow toilets to operate.

At the same time, the Trenton plant's workers were changing out the filters, cleaning out clogged pumps and readying the system for restart.  When it was restarted Monday afternoon, the valves were not opened in the correct sequence, which flushed thousands of gallons of muddy water into the water mains.  It also caused a large water main under East State Extension in Hamilton to blow out, causing the interruption of water service for several hundred customers, street flooding and the collapse of the roadway over the pipe.  The pipe, which is many years old may have ruptured due to the sudden increase in water pressure.

According to Tuesday's Trentonian,  problems with muddy water were widespread across the city.  It even disrupted business at the laundromat owned by the South Ward city councilman.  Muddy water was flowing into the washing machines and the customers couldn't get their clothes clean.

As you could imagine, being told to boil your drinking water and having mud flow from the tap is not something that is expected in the United States.  Maybe in Haiti or some other third world country, but not here.  Unlike most problems that affect the city, this one could not be ignored by our neighbors in Ewing, Lawrence, Hopewell and Hamilton townships, where many residents are also served by the Trenton Water Works.   So, welcome to the ghetto my yuppie friends, sometimes what affects us in the city finds its way to your half-million dollar houses outside the city limits.

So, you are probably wondering what can be done about this problem.  It is becoming more obvious by the day that Trenton has selected a mayor even more incompetent than the last one, and we will probably be stuck with Mr. Mack for almost four more years.  Let's face it, the man can't even keep up with the mortgage on his home.  If he lets his own home fall into foreclosure, how can we expect him to be any good at handling the city's finances.  Here is a guy who got fired from a job as a school board business administrator because he misplaced over $1 million.  He couldn't even pay his help on time after the election.  The mayor has a track record of picking his friends and supporters for key jobs, regardless of how incompetent they are.  I mean, this guy's hiring practices would even make Boss Tweed blush.

So we now have a water works in the hands of morons who fed us a diet of contaminated water last week.  The system hasn't been properly maintained because Mayor Palmer, who was in for 20 years prior to Mack refused to invest sufficient money into keeping up the system, and now we can expect to have pipes blowing out on a regular basis.  (What do you want from a mayor who also allowed the city's streets to turn into a potholed mess that resembles the Ho Chi Minh Trail.)

Well, maybe we can't expect the system to be run any better for the foreseeable future.  But you can take steps to protect yourself.  About 10 or 15 years ago I got tired of taking baths in Coca Cola colored water and installed tow whole-house filters in series on my water pipe.  They are the large sized General Electric filters that are available at any Home Depot.  Here is a picture of my system.

Replaceable filters go inside each cup located on the bottom of the apparatus.  These cups screw off with a spanner wrench which is supplied with the filter housing kit.  You have the choice of using a paper filter which is less expensive, last longer and traps most particles (mainly iron and mud), or you can go with a charcoal filter which eliminates smaller particles and also removes chlorine and makes the water taste more like bottled water.  These don't last as long.  What I do is place the paper filter in the first canister, closest to the street, and the second one gets the charcoal filter.  In normal circumstances, you can go three months on a set of filters.  This time my filters were overwhelmed after one month, because the lines were full of mud.

Here is what a set of clean filters look like.

When I changed my filters yesterday, the cup which the paper filter (top) goes into was filled up with a brown, thick liquid with an oily sheen on top.  I took a picture of it, but somehow it got deleted.  But I do have a picture of the dirty filters, and here is what they looked like after one month of service.

As you can see, the filters must be taking something out, because they are nice and brown.  In normal circumstances, the filters catch some of the calcium which clogs up the cold water taps over time around here so you don't have to take them out as much to chip out the lime deposits.  They also keep the iron chips from making it to your sink so you don't have to clean them out of the strainer on the tap.  In the city, as I said previously there has been a longstanding problem with water quality over the summer months or when there is a fire nearby.  On hot days, people open the fire hydrants and this knocks the rust loose in the water mains and you get a dose of rusty water for several days thereafter.  The filters have solved this problem and my bathwater no longer looks like Coke.  I also had the city come out and replace the pipe which runs from the water main to the curb and that improved my water quality.  The old pipe was made of galvanized steel and was rusted out.  They put in a new copper pipe.  The pipe from the curb to my house is also copper, as is all my indoor supply pipes.

Because there is a lot of sediment in the water mains even under normal circumstances, I have installed blowout valves at the end of my hot and cold water lines.  When I change the filters, I crack open the valve to "blow down" the system.  When I first put in the blow down when I installed the filters, the end part of my cold water pipe was clogged with mud and I had to shove a screwdriver up it to get it to flow.  Blowing down the system prevents sediment buildup.  here is a picture of my blowdown setup.

Here is what I got when I blew down the cold water pipe yesterday.  Because of the problems with the water main, I must have filled up the bucket at least 10 times and was unable to get it to run clear, but the water was a lot cleaner when I got done than on the first bucketful.  Here is what the first bucket of water looked like.

True, nobody should have to put up with a third world water utility in an American city.  Unfortunately, we are stuck with one.  However if you filter the incoming water, regularly blow down your hot and cold water pipes and periodically drain your hot water tank, you can insure the cleanest possible water for your family.

And of course, remember to write the Governor to ask for more tax dollars to fix up the state's physical infrastructure, including the Trenton Water Works.

Education, It All Depends on What You Do With It

When I write I don't do an outline first.  I just go at it.  As a result, when I wrote the last entry, I wrote something worthwhile, but it was not what I set out to write when I started.  So, I thought I'd keep going and write the article I originally planned to write.

An event in my personal life served as the inspiration for this article.  My sister-in-law has two sons, Jimmy and Anthony.  Jimmy in 27 and Anthony is 29 and neither one currently has a job.

Jimmy was the person that the writers of the1960's comedy song "Dropouts' March" had in mind when they wrote the words.  He is the prototypical loser kid.  He dropped out of high school and never got a GED.  He has lived at home with his mother his entire adult life.  The only job he ever had was a part-time position in the produce department at the Acme.  He recently lost the job because of a money-making opportunity he took up with another one of his friends.  He would drive his friend to apartment complexes where they would rifle cars for laptops, navigation systems and other valuables.  Well he got arrested in Pennsylvania.  While in jail, the police investigated further and found a series of similar break-ins on this side of the river.  He confessed to the New Jersey car burglaries and got charged with them as well.

As the song goes, "You won't find us in the school halls, look in the pool halls or in jail."

Anthony is the family high achiever.  He joined the Navy after high school.  I spoke to him before he went to the recruiter and told him to find out what jobs he qualifies for and to speak with me first before choosing a training program.  Well, he does everything on his own with minimal information and input.  He didn't listen and signed right up.  I asked him what he was going to train for.  It turned out he didn't select any training and spent the next four years painting the ship while working for the boat's deck department.  "Swab the deck ye maties."  and "If the Navy owns it, paint it grey." would be perfect mottos for his Navy career.

He got to sail the world of course, but didn't get to learn anything useful during his time in there.  Never fear.  He qualified for the GI Bill.  His father wanted him to take something mechanical.  He talked his son into signing up at Mercer Community College for the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning program.  I asked him what research he done and said he was going to be a plumber.  He told me that I was wrong, he was going to be an air conditioning technician and would have an easy life making $50,000 per year putting Freon in air conditioners.  I told him he was mistaken, that he would start at more like $15 per hour and would have to clean out drains, install boilers and fix leaky faucets in between work on air conditioners.
Of course I was all wrong, he said.

Well, he finished his 2-year associates degree in four years and he found out he basically took up plumbing.  He took a few jobs in the field, and found the work too hard and dirty for his tastes. (What would you expect plumbing to be, clean?).  He went to Harris School of Business to take classes in medical coding.  I told him that he was nuts.  I said he was going to be working with the girls in the front of some doctor's office.  This time he figured out I was right and promptly dropped out.

Here's where the last article comes in.  He should have seen a psychologist that specializes in career counseling even before he went to HVAC school.  He probably would have found out he was more suited to office or sales work and would have taken up something else.

So much for wasted educations and burned up taxpayers dollars.  (Perhaps if Christie really wants to save tax dollars he should look at the failure rate in higher education rather than picking on public employees who usually make modest paychecks already.)

There are a few things to remember in order to keep from becoming the next victim of the training mill scam.

First, education as job training is only useful for gaining entree into a career if you complete the program, if you learn enough enough about the job to get an entry level position, and if the job is actually what you imagined it to be.  In other words, will you actually like or be at least willing to tolerate the work.  Are there enough job openings in the field for you to find work.  Will the job pay enough so you can support yourself and pay the student loans.

Americans tend to see education as a panacea.  To most people formal higher education is seen as something essential that their children will need to find suitable work after high school.  Sad but true, popular perceptions have altered the world we live in to make it so that some kind of education beyond high school is probably needed for most people to succeed today.  The real issue is what type is best.

I understand my nephew spent a lot of time learning about Ohms Law and the physics of heater and air conditioner operation.  While this may be useful for a plumber sizing a system or for an engineer designing one, it is not something particularly useful for an entry level plumber.  They should be exposed to real-world work tasks such as learning how to solder a copper pipe, how to properly slope a pipeline, or how to assemble leaded cast iron and PVC pipes.  Classroom instruction should be supplemented with real world employment as a plumber's helper.  This is basically the way union apprenticeship programs work and they are very successful in producing competent plumbers on graduation.  We should expect no less from community colleges or proprietary schools.

If your kid wants to pursue an academic educational program, perhaps the best thing for most fields is a strong liberal arts background.  Regardless what your child takes up, he or she should take lots of classes in courses like English, history, literature and economics.  I know many people think this is a waste of time if somebody is going to school to be an accountant or computer programmer or some other specific job.  Why?  partly because students often get the same experience in their chosen field as my nephew got in plumbing.  The professional classes are long on theory and very short on skills useful on entry-level jobs.  Take chemistry and learn lots about physical chemistry and electron shells and very little about performing analysis with instruments such as a gas chormotgaph, scintillation counter or high pressure liquid chromatograph.  I should know because I took some chemistry classes at Iowa State University and didn't really understand what went on in a lab until I took work study jobs in the labs.  I got to run all that cool stuff you see in the lab on CSI, of course my equipment was ancient compared to what they have now.

I went to college and double majored in Farm Operation and Agronomy.  In case you are wondering, Agronomy is plant and soil science.  Iowa State University is where George Washington Carver got his BS degree in Agronomy.  That was the only earned degree Carver ever got or needed to become famous in his field.

I wasn't so lucky.  You pretty much need a master's degree to get a job in agricultural research.  With a BS, you are pretty much limited to jobs in sales, farm business management (grain elevators, farm supply stores, cattle-buying services, etc) or farm management.  I didn't have the work-a-day knowledge to get one of these jobs in Iowa and came back to New Jersey.

While in the Garden State, I spent about the first 10 years of my working life doing things like running a painting business, selling real estate and working in factories.  When I would go on interviews, I would get comments like "you have a very specialized degree and we really don't have any openings in your area of expertise."  The personnel managers thought I should be out with the cattle, not working in their company.

Persistence paid off.  Because nobody would hire me at first, I developed my own jobs.  By selling houses I got contacts with other agents which needed work done on properties so they could pass building inspections....Things like plumbing, electrical and painting work.  That's how the painting business got started.  You don't need an employer to buy a truck and ladders, take out ads in the Trenton Times and phone book then go out and sell jobs and swing a brush.  You just need a little cash and a lot of determination.  I also bought a rental property with $1,500 down that I saved from my high school paper route.  By fixing the house, I learned a lot about home improvements and developed my skills to the point they were commercially viable in my handyman business.

Eventually I met my future wife and she had a friend who worked the Labor Department's personnel office.  I got a part-time temporary job processing unemployment claims.  From there, I parlayed it into my present position.

The bottom line....The education that mattered the most for me was not technical courses in farming, chemistry or botany.  It was the liberal arts classes which teach you how to think and also give you the basic skills needed to learn the details of what is necessary to know to function in a business office.  For instance, when I started in my present job, I never ran a computer.  My boss handed me a Macintosh Classic computer and told me to do the mouse tutorial.  From there I learned how to do Microsoft Access database program writing and how to run the X12 seasonal adjustment program written in DOS by Royal Statistics Canada and modified by the US Census Bureau.  Bottom line...If you got it, you got it.  If given a chance you can learn practically anything from scratch on the job.  Technical coursework is just window dressing to gain entree to the workplace.

Yes, technical coursework is good.  It may even be necessary in most cases to get that first job.  But really, don't expect it to teach you how to do the job.  While it would be nice if the training was actually worthwhile, many times it is useless.  But having the same name on your degree that is in the job title of the position you are applying for just might get you past the personnel officers and onto the job.

What is more useful is the liberal arts coursework.  Somewhere after several years of reading Descartes and Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mills, the light bulb just might come on in your head and you will develop some practical problem solving skills.  It worked for me and for countless others, even if the approach sounds a little asinine.

Another family antidote.  My father grew up in Trenton and was raised by unschooled Lithuanian peasants who moved here and found work in the potteries.  My dad went to St. Hedwig's elementary school and dropped out of the sixth grade to get a job at the Polish Falcons club as a bowling pin setter.  (The Brunswick Automatic Pin Setter which made modern bowling alleys possible didn't come along until over a decade later).  He eventually got a job at American Standard as a pottery worker and retired from there.  When he retired in 1988 he made over $40,000 a year as an unskilled product packer on the assembly line.  Even though he was a grade school dropout and a drunk he knew enough to hang out in taverns and meet people who could serve as useful contacts.  He knew enough to learn how to do his job well and do what was expected at work which was show up every day and do the job right.  He knew enough to get a job at the dominant firm in the bathroom fixtures business, a place where workers were represented by a strong union.  That made him an educated man, because he mastered all the skills he needed to thrive in the world in which he lived.

He taught me something.  It doesn't matter what it says on your degree.  It doesn't really matter if you have a degree at all.  What matters is who you know, what you know and what you do with it.

Get an Education, Skip the Training Schools

You've all seen them.  Turn on your TV set to just about any channel you can think of at just about any time you can imagine, and you will get a steady diet of commercials from the University of Phoenix, Motorcycle Mechanics Institute, The Art Institutes and just about any other place you can think of that offers training on a for-profit basis.

The commercials make an assortment of pitches for their varied audiences.  You get the one with the supportive wife that encouraged her husband to return to school so that her family could enjoy a better life.  You got the one of the mom, dad and adult son driving expensive-looking all-terrain vehicles through the woods.  The words describe how the school's programs will open up a lifestyle that would otherwise not be possible without attending.  You also got the one with the young man who says he used to work minimum wage construction jobs until he was able to upgrade his skills and lifestyle by going to the school.  You can add to this the assortment of more academically-oriented for-profits offering everything from Internet MBAs to computer training courses.

So the audiences are varied, but the message is still very much the same.  Come to us, and in a few short months we can transform your life from its current low-income existence to exciting middle-class bliss.  Of course, another unspoken message is that if you choose not to go to a for-profit school, your life won't change.

Can it work?  Sometimes.  Go to the TV chef's school, and "study cuisines all over the globe", and the school just may have you back as an instructor.  But, this is the exception and not the rule.  I would be willing to bet that "studying cuisines all over the globe" means holding an assortment of key jobs in top restaurants around the world.  Of course, if you can do this, than you are another Emeril Lugossy and will make a good living no matter what.  But just going to the school won't get you anywhere unless you put something into it yourself.  You have to actually learn something from the instruction, then go out and get a job in the field and be a success at it.  And of course in an artistic endeavor like cooking, you have to have talent as well.  Try as hard as you like, if you don't have "what it takes", then your chef career will consist of working in the local greasy spoon for relatively low wages.  And, I am willing to bet, that is what happens to most graduates of this program that actually stick with the work.

I'm not going to sit here and quote facts and figures, because I feel lazy right now and don't feel like doing the research.  But don't worry, I am familiar with the story and can write about this topic fairly proficiently "off the cuff".  And besides it is more fun to do this than struggling through a bunch of material to extract good statistics.  Without quoting specific numbers, the Obama Administration has just conducted an investigation of the education industry and here's what they found:  The highest graduation rates are at private non-profit schools like Harvard, Princeton and you guessed it, Rider College.  Regardless of whether they are Ivy League or just local colleges, the private non-profits seem to be the aristocrats of the business with the most success at producing graduates from new students.  Next comes the public schools, which range from places like USC Berkeley all the way to Mercer County Community College. The highest drop out rates are at the for-profit schools.  So you apparently have a good chance of "doing something else" once again after attending Motorcycle Mechanics Institute.

The same is also true for whether graduates get jobs in their field of study.  Again private non-profits seem to be the best at graduating students who actually get work in what they took up.  Next comes the public schools.  At the bottom of the pack are the for-profits.

Ditto for student loan default rates.  The fewest defaults occur among students from private non-profits.  Next come the public colleges, and the default champs are students from for-profit schools.

There you have it.  If you want your kid to have the least chance of graduating, have the lowest chance of finding work in what they took up,  and give them the greatest chance of having student loans follow them around until retirement, then send them to a for-profit school.

Why is this so?  The "for dummies" answer is that the focus of for-profit schools is the bottom line.  Training students is not their "passion", it is just a means of producing profits.  And the greatest profits can be produced by actively recruiting students without too much concern about whether the students have the aptitude to complete the work, whether the instructors have the chops to effectively teach the subject, or whether what is being taught includes the skills that real employers are looking for, or whether the jobs at the end of the line are actually in demand or pay sufficiently to enable graduates to pay their student loans.

Sad but true, many of these schools are just degree mills looking for suckers to sign on as students in order to fatten the school's bottom line.

My interest in all this of course is that I work for the statistical branch of the New Jersey Department of Labor.  People come to the state labor department for much the same reason why they call the police or fire department.  They are having an emergency and are looking for outside help to take care of it.  In the case of people the come to the labor department, most are out of work and are looking for unemployment insurance to tide themselves over until they find another job.  And finding another job can frequently mean looking into training to improve skills to increase the chances of finding new work.

That's where we come in.  My shop produces long-term employment projections which provide insight into the number of workers in an occupation that employers are expected to need 10 years from now compared to what they need today.  This provides an indication of whether a job is in growing demand or in declining demand.
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Since the long-term demand list is not supposed to take the business cycle into account, it doesn't always work too well over the short term during a recession.  So our staff developed another product called Real Time Jobs In Demand to provide an indication of whether employers are hiring workers in a given occupation today as well as how many workers in this occupation are currently out of work.   One way this is useful is that if a lot of experienced truck drivers are already out of work, what do you think your chances of finding work after going to truck driving school would be.  Not too good of course.

I am not saying that private trade schools are always bad choices for youths preparing for the world of work or for adults interested in a career change.   All I am saying is take the claims of the counselors at the school with a grain of salt.  Go to your local One Stop Career Center or to an independent career counselor for the real dope on the job's employment outlook, pay scales, working conditions, etc.

Public Employees Deserve the Right to Contribute to Political Campaigns

Finally we're back on track after a few articles about broken-down Catholic cemeteries, dirty ghetto kitchens and a homely-looking female suburban mayor with a masculine-sounding voice.  Now we're back to looking at the antics of our favorite governor, Chris Christie.

While at work I got the following copy of an an article which appeared on the NJ Biz website on September 14, 2010.  It was written by Andrew Kitchenman.  If you are interested in the NJ Biz website, it can be found at http://www.njbiz.com/.   Mr. Kitchenman's email address is akitchenman@njbiz.com.

Pension Proposal Would Reduce Benefits, Increase Public Worker Contributions

State employees would see lower pension benefits and pay more for health insurance under a set of pension changes proposed Tuesday by Governor Christie.

Christie proposed rolling back the 9 percent increase in pension credit passed in 2001 for any work done by state employees from this point forward.  In addition, he would increase the nominal retirement age for public employees to 65, increase the number of years they must work to be eligible for early retirement from 25 to 30, eliminate annual cost-of-living adjustments and increase the pension contribution of current employees - which currently is as low as 3 percent of salary - to 8.5 percent.

Along with the pension changes, Christie also proposed increasing the share of health insurance costs paid by public employees from 8 percent to 30 percent.  In addition, he would shift from a system where employees pay 1.5 percent of their salary to one in which they pay for a share of premiums.

The proposals were met by a warm response from business groups.

New Jersey Business and Industry Association President Phillip Kirschner said private-sector employees are currently paying four to five times what public employees are paying for health insurance.  "Current pension costs represent a benefit the state simply can't afford' Kirshner said,

Karen A. Davis, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey, said the current health insurance contributions unfairly affect single employees by being based on salaries.

"For years, our chamber has been calling for reforms of public employee benefits to bring them in line with the private sector and save taxpayer dollars." Davis said.

Michael Egenton, senior vice president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce said private-sector employees have been making difficult decisions throughout the recession from cutting benefits to making layoffs.

"They're doing what they have to do to meet their bottom line, and we want the state, county and local governments to do the same," Egenton said.  "These are not very popular decisions, but certainly on the private-sector side, we recognize and appreciate and applaud the governor's efforts.

The point of reprinting the NJ Biz article here is not to use their words to explain Christie's plans for legislation to modify pension and health insurance benefits for state, county and local employees in the state.  This article is not so much about the substance of the governor's plans as the reason why I am very much in disagreement with another one of his proposed legislative initiatives.  Under the guise of "ethics reform" the governor wants to ban unions representing government employees from contributing to the political campaigns of candidates for elected office on the state, county or local level.

He already tried to do this once.  Shortly after taking office Christie issued an executive order which stated that public employee unions are covered by pay to play legislation and as a result, unions that represent public employees cannot legally contribute more than a nominal amount to political campaigns.

Needless to say, the unions took this matter to court and the state supreme court sided with the unions.  They ruled that pay to play was meant to keep private businesses wishing to do business with governments from gaining favor from officials who may contract for government services after they get elected.  In other words, the legislation was to keep companies from financing candidate's campaigns in return for government contracts to provide goods and services once the  candidates get in office.

Unions weren't targeted by the original legislation because they have noting to sell to the state or to local governments.   All public employee unions do is represent employees when they negotiate contracts covering wages and benefits.  Currently, the only money that public employee unions can use on political campaigns is the money that is contributed by "full" union members, or those people who actively choose to join the union.  Non-members only pay "agency fee" dues, which only covers the cost of negotiating and administering the contract and not political activity.

Now here we come back to the NJ Biz article.  As you can recall. it is a highly-biased piece written in support of the governor's position that the legislation is necessary to safeguard taxpayer interests.  The article quotes officers of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce taking positions supporting the legislation.  

While I may disagree with the position taken by NJ Biz and these three organizations, I support their right to lobby in support for their position.  The members of the state business and industry association and of the two chambers of commerce mentioned collect dues from their members with the understanding that this money be used for political activity.

If we can accept the idea that business people have the right to band together and form organizations that collect dues to lobby for legislation beneficial to business interests, we must also support the right of workers to contribute to similar organizations suppoorting pro-worker positions.  When public employees pay dues to their union that are used to lobby on their behalf, they do so willingly.  If they didn't want their money spent that way, they can opt out of the union and become agency shop members.  The money is not being given to bribe officials to award a contract from a governmental entitity to pay money to the union.  The only money the union gets comes from its members.  The contributions to the union are voluntary and are the same as contributions from businesses to their organizations like the Chamber of Commerce.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.  If Christie wants to make it illegal for unions to support candidates he should also make it illegal for business organizations like to Chamber of Commerce of the Association of Realtors from supporting candidates as well.  This is probably illegal and is not going to happen, of course.  The point being made is that both unions and business organizations should be allowed to contribute because both workers and businesses have equal rights to free political speech.  Its only fair.

Mayor Janice Mironov. You Get to Decide

Janice Mironov is East Windsor's long-time mayor.  Here he is pictured to the left with the 2010 Mrs. East Windsor Spotlight beauty queen.  (The mayor is a real beauty too, isn't she.)

Here is a video of East Windsor Township Mayor Janice Mironov.  A friend of mine has seen her regularly on the community news broadcasts that cut into the Jane Velez Mitchell show when it is shown on Comcast in Trenton. 

Although I can't find anything on the Internet to confirm her suspicions, my friend swears "Janice" is either a man living as a woman or "she" is a transsexual.  I got curious and went online and found this video of her giving a speech.  I can definitely say that if she is really a genetic female, then she is the most mannish female I ever ran into.

Here it is.  You be the judge. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3zFJla9-hU&feature=related
     Here's another one.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DMiesx57jc

Update 6/12/11:  Personally, I believe Janice is a man, or at least s-he was born one.

Somebody pulled down the old video that I was linked to, so I put up two new ones.

I don't live in East Windsor, I live in Trenton, so I don't have any personal experience with the job s-he is doing, but they must like her there, because they have kept her in office for about 20 years.  If s-he keeps getting re-elected s-he must be doing something right.  I believe this all the more so, because unlike San Francisco or New Hope, East Windsor is your typical conservative New Jersey suburb and doesn't have a large gay colony or anything like that.

It appears the people in East Windsor made up their minds about her abilities on an objective basis and did not rush to conclusions from first impressions.  "Don't judge a book by its cover."

I tried to get some information about her life, such as childhood, college attended, year of graduation, etc. but have come up empty.  My guess is s-he doesn't want her past made public.  I Know s-he is an attorney with a private law practice, but that's about all I can find out from the web.

Com'on Janice, come "out" with the obvious.  Let everybody know that you are a 24-7 gurl that has been able to make it on her own in a leadership position in the straight world.  You have an obligation to the rest of the LGBT community to let the public know.

Perpetual Care? Think Again. Before Burying Your Loved Ones in a Catholic Cemetery Check It Out First.

St. John's Cemetery located off of Lalor Street started accepting burials sometime in the late 1850s, before the start of the Civil War.  The parish which owns this cemetery has an interesting history.  When it opened as the first Catholic parish in New Jersey's Capital City, Sacred Heart at 1 Centre St was called St. John's, hence the Cemetery's name.  However, Irish immigration soon overwhelmed the parish which was founded by German immigrants.  Arguments ensued over who would be in charge and the parish eventually split in two.  The Irish got the original location which was renamed Sacred Heart.  The Germans moved a few blocks over and formed St. Francis. 

You would think that a cemetery this old would value its history.  Think again.  It seems that Sacred Heart has better things to do with its money than to look after its dead.  The aside from sending in a landscaping crew with lawnmowers and weed whackers it does little to take care of the grounds.  I am familiar with the place and up until last year, the stone of this Navy veteran of the SS Teal was standing.  Now it lays on its side and is regularly run over by landscaping equipment.  As far as I know, the "SS Teal" mentioned here was either the USS Teal, a minesweeper which saw service off the coast of New Jersey during World War 1 or the British freighter that was sunk in the Atlantic by the Germans during first world war.

One dirty little secret that the funeral director won't tell you about is that the concrete vault in which the coffin is enclosed doesn't last forever.  After about 80 to 150 years, this vault will rupture and the ground above the vault will cave in to form the shape of a coffin.  It looks like Mr. Eckert is suffering from just this sinking feeling.  (Get off your butts, perpetual care crew and fill that hole in.)

It seems the problems have only gotten worse for the permanent residents of St. John's since the parish has "forgotten" to replace its caretaker, who used to lock the gate each night.  My wife's stepmother's sister's husband, Charlie, who used to live across the street from the cemetery fulfilled that role.  After he moved out about five years ago, the church never replaced him.  Now, the cemetery gets whole new groups of visitors it never had in the past, including the homeless who come to the place to sleep and drink liquor.  It also draws youths who like to do nothing better than to throw midnight stone dumping parties.  The bums aren't really much of a problem, they leave their vodka bottles for the maintenance crew then move on.  Its the vandals that cause the real damage. 

It's not like toppled stones are a rare occurrence here, or that the cemetery actually does anything about it.  They just lay around on the ground, sometimes for years.  Unless the family pays to have them uprighted, repaired or replaced, nothing is ever done about it.  That just encourages more vandalism because the kids know that the parish really doesn't care about the property.

Its bad enough that the cemetery keeps getting vandalized and that the parish is too cheap to clean up the mess or even hire someone to lock the gate.  In the process a valuable historical treasure is being destroyed.  Back in the day, people tended to stay in the same area and used tombstones to document their historical heritage.  Many of the older stones list exact birth dates and death dates, the names of parents and sometimes the place of birth.  The stones often contain sayings and a statement as who paid for the stone.  They are living history and deserve to be preserved.  By allowing them to be destroyed, we are also allowing a part of our heritage to be destroyed.  These stones are irreplaceable reminders of our 19th century and early 20th century past.

If the destruction of our past is not a good enough of a reason to clean up this mess, perhaps the welfare of the living should be.  For this cemetery is still active and people are still being buried here.  Of course, this means that people are still spending money on stones that are at risk of being destroyed by vandals and mourners still come and these people are at risk of being attacked by criminals.  By allowing conditions to deteriorate to the level they have, Sacred Heart Parish and the Diocese of Trenton are putting the lives and property of the living at risk whenever they visit the place or invest in memorials for the deceased.

I would certainly be very sceptical about handing money over to Sacred Heart to bury a family member in St. John's.  Remember it's still not too late to demand respect for the living and the dead and demand that the Diocese of Trenton clean up this mess.

As Goes Packard, So Goes The Nation

Packards were a lot like Cadillacs.  Prior to the second world war, Packards were considered to be superior to Cadillacs and were purchased by politicians, gangsters and business leaders.  Noted for their durability, Packards were often used to make ambulances and hearses.  Here is an example of a 1939 Packard hearse.

Many of the articles in this blog are about more than one thing.  Last month I wrote a piece which featured a picture of a 1956 Packard and a picture of the Packard factory in Detroit as it appears today.  While I am not certain if it is wholely accurate, several sources on the web say that the Packard plant is the largest abandoned factory in the country today.  I am certain that at one time, the Roebling factory in Trenton was even larger than the 3,500,000-square-foot Packard plant.  However, apparently Trenton has done a better job of digesting this plant.  Part of it has been converted to offices and retail space, some of it has been torn down and part of it still lies dormant.

One thing is certain.  Detroit has the largest concentration of abandoned industrial and commercial properties in the nation.  This is largely because of the decline of the American automotible manufacturing industry.

The story of Packard plays out like a Greek tragedy.  From the time the company was founded until the end of World War II, the company was an American success story so cliche, that it almost sounds made up.  However from 1946 onward, the story of the company was how inept management can take a perfectly good company and run it straight into the ground.

Basically, in the postwar period the company stopped being what it was that made it a success.  Instead it lost its way and tried to be something else.  As a result it self-destructed.

The lesson of what happened to Packard was not learned by the other car makers.  General Motors, Ford and Chrysler also forgot what it was that made them great and as a result, Ford is much smaller than what it once was and GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and would have also disappeared if they weren't rescued by the government.

The car companies aren't the only organizations in this nation that have lost their way.  It appears the country as a whole is also suffering from the same fate. 

Raising Roaches For Fun and Profit

Cockroach Farming For Dummies:  The best way to raise a large colony of healthy roaches is to keep a cluttered home.  The roach colony enables this Trenton resident to clean her dishes without washing them

While browsing the web, I came across an article in Better Trenton Ghetto Homes and Gardens about roach farming.  The article stated that farming roaches in your kitchen was a shore fire way of getting rid of pesky houseguests that keep coming over to your place for dinner.  One look at your kitchen, and your unwanted company will be gone for good!.

Another benefit of having roaches is added protein in the diet.  Since they get in your food, you are guaranteed a dose of insect protein with every bite.  If you think that's gross, did you know that lobsters, crabs and shrimps, which are classified as crustaceans, are close relatives of spiders and insects.  So when you go to a fancy restaurant and order lobster, basically what you are getting a large insect that lives in the sea.  So save money on food and eat more roaches.

Additionally, having roaches in the home helps improve the health of you and your family.  When you run around with the can of disinfectant and reach for the hand sanitizer, what you are doing is creating a semi-sterile environment for you and your family.  That means when you come in contact with something that's dirty and germy, your body has no resistance to it and you get sick.  The best way to avoid this problem is to live in filth.  Our ancient forebearers in the stone age, whether they lived in caves or in trees, had minimal sanitation.  Studies of modern stone age tribes in the jungles of Brazil and in the South Pacific indicate that individuals live quite healthy lives until they enter their late 60s.  It is at that time that most tribe members die of infectious disease.

So live like a savage.  Don't clean your house and avoid death by cancer and heart disease.  Die of germs instead!

I hope you figured out that this is an attempt at satire.  I got the idea when I was spraying the home of a person who I know who happens to have a clutter problem.  That's a good way of getting a roach problem.

The stuff I used works pretty good.  It was made by BASF, the company that manufactured the gas the Nazis used in the death camps.  That gas was nothing more than an earlier version of the BASF roach bomb.  Them krauts shore know how to make a good bug killer.  Kills roaches real good.

I used to work for American Cyanamid as a temp for a while back in the 1980s.  I learned that the Princeton research center was the place where they developed Combat roach products.  They actually had a room there where they raised roaches under optimal conditions.

Today, the American Cyanamid property which sits on Rt. 1 just north of the Quakerbridge Mall on the same side of the road is largely abandoned.  The farm buildings and fields are rented by farmers, but the labs and offices are empty.  The loss of another great source of jobs for Trenton.  I believe the last occupant of the property was BASF which also used it an an agricultural research facility.

Ask a Man Who Owns One.....He'll Tell You to Buy A Big American Car

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Ask the man who owns one is the slogan that appeared in Packard ads from 1901 all the way until the brand went out of production in 1958.  This particular Packard is a 1956 Caribbean.  June 25, 1956 was the date that the Packard factory on East Grand Boulevard at Concord in Detroit ended production. and was the last year "real" Packards were made.  This top of the line model sported an array of features including a 300+ horsepower V-8, power windows and door locks and factory air.  It sold for about $5,500, a small fortune at the time.  However, that sounds like a bargain compared to what a vehicle like this in pristine condition goes for today...Around $100,000!

 Part of the fun of having a blog is you can write about anything you want.  Although this has basically turned out to be an anti-Christie blog, I often write about other things as well in between my attacks on the governor.  It gets a little tiring just writing about the governor and I'm sure the people who follow me get sick of reading about nothing else but him.

Today I am writing about my tastes in automobiles.  As you can probably guess from the picture of the Packard at the beginning of this entry, I like them big, powerful and well equipped.  A Smart or a Toyota Prius is not my idea of a daily driver.  Neither is a Lexus or even a Nissan Sentra.  To me, if they are not rear wheel drive, American made and V-8 powered, they're not worth considering.  Yes, a  1956 Packard would turn me on, but so do Lincoln Town Cars and real wheel drive Cadillacs.

They do not have to be old.  The car I currently drive is a 2008 Mercury Grand Marquis LS.  I bought it new in July 2008 back when gas was $4.50 per gallon.  So when I say I don't care about gas mileage, I really mean it.   The LS is the top of the line model and mine came with all the bells and whistles like leather seats, a decent stereo, heated seats and pedals which can be adjusted to fit the driver.  Needless to say it has the most important features of all - a V-8 motor and a real wheel drive power train.

See,  I don't drive like a grandpa.  Mounted on my windshield is a Valentine 1 Radar Detector.  Top of the line, lust like the car, the Valentine 1 sells for $500 and is unique in that it tells you where the radar source is located.  That's important if you got a lead foot.

The car's trip computer indicates that I am getting 15.5 mpg, pretty damn good if you consider that my way of getting on Route 1 from the Mercer Mall and the other stores in Lawrenceville and West Windsor is to drop the hammer.  In other words, I look for a the first gap of about 30 feet or so and just floor the thing.  You'll be up to 50 in about 5 seconds, so it just doesn't matter what's coming up behind you.

If you think my job comes with a state-issued car, just forggetaboutit.  State cars exist in Hollywood and in the imaginations of the writers of the Trentonian, not in the real world of working stiffs.  On my job I get to go on the road about three or four times a month so I can meet with the people at the one stops and get to see what is going on across South Jersey.  When I'm out, I drive about 5 or 6 hours each day and log between 120 and 150 miles.  The big Merc allows me to travel in comfort even though it costs a bit more to operate than the 32 cents per mile that the state reimburses me.

To understand why I like big gas hogs, you need to know a little about me as well at the vehicles I've driven throughout the years.  The big car fetish is the easy part.  A lot of that has to do with being 6 feet one inch tall and having a weight of 270 pounds.  When you're that big, you want a car to match especially if you spend a lot of time in it.  The American made and rear wheel drive part has a lot to do with being middle aged, that's what I grew up with.

I know all about the modern writing style.  The experts say that people today have short attention spans especially when online, so keep it brief and to the point.  Don't worry however, I like to break rules, so I will stay to form and write a book as usual.  Like I said in the begining, I am going to keep going and discuss some of the cars I had years ago.

I was born and raised in and around Trenton.  My father worked at the American Standard pottery and my mom was an industrial nurse.  In other words, she worked in various factories throughout her career and took care of employees injured on the job.  We were working class.  Forget about Packards or even V-8s.  My parents usually bought used stripped down 6 cylinder vehicles.

The low-end cars of the 1950s and 1960s were of a type no longer sold today.  In that era, most cars were "standard size" meaning big - but not enormous affairs capable of comfortably carrying 6 adults.  For anybody under 50, sedans that can carry 6 adults in comfort are an unknown commodity.  Hell, my Grand Marquis even can't do that.  But a 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air could.  More about the Bel Air later.  Then, what do I mean by not being enormous.  Well that class of vehicle - the truly enormous, was made up of behemoths like the Packard pictured at the start of this story or the Cadillac Fleetwood - hardly the kind of thing my family (or most families for that matter) could afford.  The "rest of us" had to made due with Chevys, Fords, Dodges, Plymouths and the like.  And my family drove stripped down versions of this babies.

Just like "smaller car" had quite another meaning in the 1950s than now, so did the term "stripped down".  Today that means the absence of a navigation system or a heated steering wheel, but certainly includes factory air conditioning, power steering, power brakes and an AM-FM stereo.  Well stripped in the 1950s meant the cars were lacking things like heaters, oil filters or AM radios.  You got a rubber floor.(carpet was an option), a 3 on the tree manual transmission and an in-line six cylinder engine barely big enough to get the car up to 60 miles per hour on level ground and that was pretty much it.  The brakes were manual (remember to stomp hard), the steering was manual and turning the wheel was like steering a ship, something like 2 complete turns from lock to lock.  Some cars even had a manual choke.  You had to pull the thing out to start the car and push it in once it started.  Not that a manual choke was not a bad thing, the automatic chokes of the day absolutely positively sucked.  My parents normally kept a screwdriver in the glove box.  You used it to start the car.  To start the car, you take the air filter cover off and shove a screwdriver down the butterflies.  Once the car warmed up, you'd remove the screwdriver and replace the air cleaner.

Nope, driving these things was not something out of American Graffiti. It was more like the Opie and Andy Show.

Here are some of the cars I remember that my parents had when I was a kid.  We had a 1954 Dodge.  I don't remember anything special about it except that when I was 4, I put it in neutral and had it rolling down from the Hilltop Shops in Bordentown and almost took it into Rt. 206.  My mom chased it and managed to stop it in time.  I guess if she wasn't successful, you wouldn't be reading this.  We had my grandmother's old 1952 Chevy.  It came with a 2-speed Hydromatic transmission which meant it jerked unbelievably hard when going from low to high gear.  That model was equipped with after-market turn signals. (in 52 turn signals were optional).  Then there was the 1952 Chevy pickup with a hole in the cab floor.  That had a manual choke and a throttle.  Throttle was the cruise control of the day.  Strictly manual like everything else.  You pulled a button out that fed the truck more gas.  Since that was all there was to it, it wasn't much good if you were on a hill because the truck would slow down going up and speed up going down hill.  One more honorable mention was the 1958 Olds 98 my dad bought in a bar in the late 1960s.  That was the exception to the rule because it was equipped with everything including a real automatic transmission and a powerful V-8.  It didn't stay at the house long.  When my mom saw it, she said "it's an 8.  It will use too much gas.  Get that bomb out of here."  That was the first and last time I saw it.

There was one car we had in childhood that deserves more than a fleeting mention.  That was the "king of the lemons", a 1961 Rambler Classic station wagon.  No doubt, if you know anything at all about 1960's classic cars, you heard of the "lay down Rambler".  That meant that all the seats folded down flat to form a bed.  This was a vestige of a long-standing feature of Nash Ambassador automobiles.  Some Ambassador wagons were even equipped at one time with a real mattress so you could use it as a camper.  That was in the late 1940s.  Then, you could get screens as an option so you could leave the windows open at night and keep out the bugs.

We got the Rambler in 1962 as a used car.  I remember going to Reedman's with my parents and sat in the room when they were talking with the salesman.  I remember they were looking at a new Chevy at first, but my mom thought it was too much money.  The salesman said he had a real sharp machine that was only a year old that was a lot cheaper than the Chevy.  It was the Rambler.

My mom loved it at first sight.  It was white.  "easier to keep clean and cooler in the summer".  Of course, it had no air conditioning, so the white paint job was seen as a plus on hot summer days.  It was a 9-passenger model, which meant it came with a fold-down third seat in the far rear.  My sister and I loved it, because it faced rearward and we loved riding back there.  It was like we had the car to ourselves because we didn't have to look at our parents.  Another feature was that the tailgate swung out to the side, rather than opening down flat.  "Makes it easier for the kids to get in and out."  Lastly it had modern "Captive Air" run-flat tires.  These had an inner core which stayed pressurized if the tire went flat.  That way you could keep driving and reach the gas station and have the thing fixed without changing it.  See, back in the day, tires were much less reliable than now and flats were a common occurrence.

Other neat things about the wagon was that it had a push button automatic transmission.  Rather than a shifter on the steering column it had buttons on the dash.  The dash had lots of push buttons and chrome. 
My parents got slip covers for it at Rayco on Broad Street in Hamilton.  They were meant to protect the upholstery, which was much less durable than modern seat coverings..  Yes, the Classic even came with things like carpet, a radio and a heater with defrosters.  (A real redneck Caddy, you think!)

The Classic was an intermediate-sized car, in between the full-sized Ambassador and the compact American.  By 1961, the micro-sized Nash Metropolitan was extinct.

Now comes the lemon part.  My first bad memory of the "car from hell" was from the time our family went to see my mother's sister at her farm in Illinois.  Her sister married a soldier from Ft. Dix in the 1950s.  He was a farmer, so she got to be a mid west farmer's wife after growing up in Bordentown as the daughter of an employee of Roebling Steel.  What did the 1,200 mile each way trip do to our lovely Rambler.  Well, the engine boiled over at regular intervals.  I remember my dad getting sprayed  with boiling hot water when he took off the radiator cap.

The overheating problem persisted the whole time we had the thing.  Going to Seaside was a real treat.  You had to take a few gallons of water with you for the car.  Sometime after you passed Allentown, you had to pull over and add water.  The same thing going home.

Another nasty habit this junk heap had was loosing the passenger-side front wheel.  Several times over the four years we had it, the wheel fell off.  Once we went to the school to pick up my sister and I said something about the wheel falling off.  Speak of the devil, the wheel came off when we stopped at the school.

One feature of the vehicle was that it was equipped with an aluminum head.  The car had my mother's favorite engine configuration, a straight six.  The aluminum head was nothing but problems and the car got several valve jobs.  It rocked and knocked like a sewing machine.

Finally, in 1966 my father sold the car at the bar for $50.00.  That's right, a lay down Rambler for a General Grant.  Good Riddance.

I was going to write more, but I think I did enough for today.  Perhaps another time, I'll tell you about my experiences with my first car, a 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air formerly owned by my stepfather.  It came with a 235 cubic inch straight six.  It had no radio, a rubber floor and no oil filter.  Unlike Ford, Chevrolet took mercy on their base-model purchasers and threw in a heater and defroster at no extra charge.  Of course it cam with manual "captain" steering, "stomp 'em" 4-wheel manual drum brakes, and a 3 on the tree manual transmission complete with a clutch with a throw as long as a Mack truck.

That was what I learned to drive on.  My experiences with the Chevy enabled me to get a chauffeur's license a couple years latter.  I kept this car for the beginning of my college career and made many a trip from Iowa State University in Ames to Trenton and back.  It was during those trips I proved it can carry six adults in perfect comfort.

That's enough for a taste of what may come in a future post.

From what I told you so far, you can now understand why I love big luxury model V-8 highway cruisers.  Of course, I had more of my fill of base-model "lead sleds" and have grown to appreciate the finer things in motoring life.

So leave saving gas and driving rice grinder Camrys to the schmucks.  For me, for now anyway, I'm proud to say that if you don't drive at least a Panther-Class Ford Motor Co. product, then your car has no class.

Photo:  The Detroit News

In its heyday, the mighty Packard Motor Cars. Co. factory in Detroit was advertised as the most modern auto manufacturing facility in the world.  Today, it is the nation's largest abandoned factory.  The 3.5 million square-foot. facility runs along Concord Street for a full half mile and contains over three times the total square footage of the Quakerbridge Mall..  When it was operational, no doubt it was one of Detroit's crown jewels.  Today, it still stands as a ruin of monumental proportions.  The vacant plant is a magnet for homeless people, drug users, scrap collectors, and of course, photographers and urban explorers interested in seeing industrial ruins.