Newark after Booker: City faces takeover threat (NJ)

Associated Press ^ | Apr 5, 2014 11:59 AM EDT | Samantha Henry

[Olog-hai]

New Jersey’s largest city is hitting some roadblocks just months after its rising-star mayor went off to Washington. A bold reform plan for the state-run school system has hit a snag, the police department is facing federal oversight over citizen complaints, and the state is threatening a takeover of the city’s finances after several key deadlines were missed.

An official who oversees city compliance with state obligations warned the City Council and the interim mayor last month about the state’s growing concern over Newark’s “extraordinary level of fiscal distress.” …

[JerseyHighlander]

The entire city is now in fiscal distress. Every notable office building in the city has large amounts of office space available.
http://www.loopnet.com/New-Jersey/Newark_Office-Space-For-Lease/

[Rodamala]

When I was going to school in Newark, every day I would drive down High Street the Hood on MLK and pass the old Ballantine Mansion... all boarded up... just like Detroit. I could only imagine what that neighborhood once was... all lovely brick mansions owned by wealthy brewer and industrialist families. Now it's all Trayvons jaywalking right in front of you like you are not there... smoking a blunt with a 40 of Olde English 800 in hand screaming obscenities at the ghetto rat's down the street as he shuffles off to service one of his 5 baby mammas... or trade in EBT card funds for instant lottery tickets and grape-flavored blunt wrappers.

[alloysteel]

And of course, now-Senator Booker would know nothing about whatever it was that was going on in Newark all those years he was coming up through the ranks there.

Does anybody remember a fellow named Robert Torricelli? Or maybe James Traficant?

[Focault's Pendulum]

Growing up in Jersey City I saw the steady decline of Newark starting with the riots in the 60's.

Booker was mesmerized by his cult of personality always having his eye on higher office.

He didn't even live there during much of his mayoral term.

[nascarnation]

I see him as running neck and neck with DeVal Patrick for Hillary’s VP slot.

[gleeaikin]

Did Booker do it or is his replacement more incompetent?

[Count of Monte Fisto]

The fink Chris Christie could have appointed a Republican to that Senate seat but instead opted for a special election in which the Corporate Media crowned the phony Booker. Christie didn’t want anything to interfere with his own reelection.

[Bluestocking]

This explains why Hillary Clinton is so far ahead in the Democratic polls. Two of her potential 2016 challengers — Joe ‘’The Joker” Biden and Cory ‘’The Mayor Who Drove Newark Into Bankruptcy’’ Booker — are virtually unelectable; and electable candidates like Elizabeth Warren dare not exhibit any presidential ambitions without fear of reprisals from the Clintons.

So Hillary is not being tested at all. She will win the 2016 nomination by coronation rather than election, and then her Democratic subjects will discover they don’t like their new queen very much, for the same reason most Americans don’t like queens or any other unelected monarchs ruling over them — George III, for example.

Then the untested Queen Hillary will have to face a Republican challenger who will have been nominated through the Democratic process because of his or her relatively superior merits, energy, and vote-getting ability.

Is this what the Democrats want? Probably not, but what can they do about it? Start a Draft Wesley Clark movement? Get behind Bernie Sanders, whose Socialist ideology most Democrats share?

[nascarnation]

Remember Hillary was a lock until Jan 2008 when they rolled out Caliph Baraq.

Keep your eyes on Axlerod. Until/unless he commits to the Clinton Crime Family, all bets are off.

[firebrand]

It’s OK. I have in-laws who still live there.

[kearnyirish2]

“The entire city is now in fiscal distress. Every notable office building in the city has large amounts of office space available.”

Definitely; if laying off 160 cops during a murder spree wasn’t a signal...

I remember when First Union moved their back offices out of 550 Broad Street (they used to hve the large lighted green sign atop the building); you would think they’d firebombed the city. The fact is that many employers can’t attract good workers to Newark if employment in suburbs (Parsippany, Secaucus, Rutherford, Paramus, etc.) is available.

[kearnyirish2]

“The fink Chris Christie could have appointed a Republican to that Senate seat but instead opted for a special election in which the Corporate Media crowned the phony Booker.”

My understanding at the time was that it was standard practice to appoint someone from the party of the missing senator to fill out the term (as the “will of the voters”); is that not true?

[kearnyirish2]

“In the national media, I have heard nothing but glowing reviews of Booker.”

He is a clean, articulate person that doesn;t have a negro accent unless he wants to use one; sound familiar?

Locally he was seen (by the NJ whites that pay his salary) as an improvement over his corrupt predecessor; not enough of an improvement that whites would re-settle in Newark, but the wholesale pillaging before was blatant.

[Popman]

And officials haven't addressed how they plan to tackle a $34 million budget gap for 2014, a deficit that could grow.

...he brought to the perpetually cash-strapped city of about 277,000 residents only 10 miles from Manhattan.

$ 34 million / 277,00 residents = $122.77 per resident

Seems like a pretty easy fix...

Of course the 34 million deficit is a lie...