Strength, brand image, and 'reformers'

A baseball pitcher, a Swartzenegger quote, and Beth Mason's dilemma.

Red Sox (sometimes) pitcher Craig Hansen has bopped around from the major to the minor leagues. Like any ballplayer, he wants to stick in the bigs. Hansen has taken to constantly writing down the following quote from Arnold Schwartzenegger:

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardship and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”

This idea is pertinent to Hoboken's 'reform' gang. They insist they are 'strong' because they recently won two elections. Of course, those elections were won not because of their organization, moral compass, or 'reform' message, but because they had the backing of the HCDO mob. These are the political bosses of Hudson County, and the 'reformers' are currying favor with them. This is the source of the 'strength' they brag about.

The HCDO has an interest in the 'reformers' so long as they'll operate in an mutually-agreed 'zone', putting on a show of 'reform' without actually interfering with business as usual. Mason, by contrast, is a real thorn in the side of the HCDO, and has quickly become a thorn in the sides of Cunningham and Zimmer as well. However, Mason also presents an opportunity for Cunningham and Zimmer.

The 'reformers' seek to demonstrate their value to the HCDO by undermining Mason while delivering 'reformer' votes to the HCDO. The process of villifying Mason has already begun (as attested by Cunningham's 'school board' letter blaming Mason for their slate's loss). 

The key to being a 'reformer' is to control the brand. If just ANYONE can run as a 'reformer', with no tribute to the 'brand' holders, reformers have no power. That's why Tony Soares worked against Beth Mason and Scott Delea during their campaigns: Soares gained nothing from their wins. That's why Soares and others constantly troll local message boards under various assumed names, slandering rivals to prevent them from gaining any footholds to political office. Power is what it's all about, for a 'reformer'.

Beth Mason lacks the covert support the 'reformers' enjoy. No one will curry favor for her, no one will buy influence for her, and no one will ensure the outcome of elections for her. Her strength, if she finds it, must emerge from her struggle. And she has quite a struggle ahead of her.

The challenge the 'reformers' face is in destroying Mason in such a way that she will be blamed for the 'reformer split', leaving their own hands looking clean. The challenge for Mason will be in surviving despite having no real allies on the Council.

How to get 'reformers' to stall a hospital investigation

How does the HCDO tell 'reformers' to deal with an awkward investigation into Hoboken's hospital?

Well, it conveys the following - not as explicitly as we have done here, of course, but along these lines:

"Look, the hospital's bleeding money. We don't know how to run a hospital. Never did - never SAID we did. We needed jobs for our stooges and hangers-on, especially after the UMDNJ deal next door went sour . We got a payroll to meet, people we owe favors to. So we needed to move operations into a new storefront for awhile. Just for awhile. And we need to keep Roberts in office. We have no more respect for him than you do, that goes without saying. But he don't make waves. In fact, he does a great job of wringing his hands and acting all concerned whenever there's heat over missing money, or deals that call the wrong kind of attention to themselves. Gotta give him his due. He'll promise anything the public wants until the shitstorm of the day blows over. Which is great, keeps things running smooth. That's why we need him.

And you need him, too. You need a scapegoat for when things go wrong. He's up for that, It's what he brings to the table, and it's why he survives. It works.

Now, all you have to do is string the hospital thing out a little. Tell the papers these things take time. You can't tell them 'everything's fine', 'cause sooner or later it'll hit the fan. But you can't tell them 'you see problems' either, 'cause that will only make things worse. You just gotta learn to manage it, that's the bottom line. First, tell them you're getting up to speed. Later on, tell them you're working with the County Prosecutor. Doing a thorough job, no stone unturned, working it through the system (unlike Mason), doing things the RIGHT way like responsible elected officials, not mavericks. That'll make it sound like you really mean business. Best of all, tell them Mason is costing the taxpayer money. That way you get to be seen as looking out for the taxpayer, while Mason gets to explain to the press why she's so free with taxpayer money. Believe it or not, that really works. Trust me.

We just need to get past this election. It's Roberts' turn this time, but we'll take care of you down the road. That's how politics works. You'll move up in line, and you can always count on us when YOU need something. You have powerful, important friends now, all the way up to the Governor. And that's more than you can say for Mason. She'll get no help from the Council, the papers, or anyone else. Believe me, no one's going to stick their neck out. She's on her own. The few friends she does have, have no real juice.

And don't worry about being hung out to dry when the bill comes in for this thing. I know that's what you're worried about, but remember - we're partners here. It'll be your committee, not Mason's suit, that uncovers the news. That means you CONTROL the news, too. You'll get the credit for the 'oversight of finances', you'll be the heroes. You can even make us out to be the heavy a little bit if you need to - we're big enough to take it. There really won't be much fallout though. Most of the bill will be paid for with the sale of the property, which by the way, we'll also handle. The public doesn't really mind these property sales that much, they don't see them as coming straight out of their pocket. The rest of the losses you can attribute to the state's financial condition. Times are tough and all hat. And the state, if it has to, will blame Bush for the bad economy and not enough Fed dollars for hospitals. See, the buck can be passed all the way up. Then it disappears. It's like a Penn and Teller show.

No one's going to blame you for anything. You're the good guys, and believe me all we want to do is make sure you keep being seen that way. That's in our mutual interests. You can say that Mason was slowing your work down with her suit, and that if it wasn't for the delay, you might have saved some of the losses. And she did cause delays! I mean, that's really true, right? Really, you ARE investigating it. You're not lying. Mason was just one more thing you really didn't need to deal with. And the hospital's problems really are just circumstantial in nature. Hey, things are tough all over, everybody knows that. Who sees hard times coming? We just wanted to do the right thing, and keep a hospital and jobs here. Hell, that's a GOOD thing. Not our fault things went south. We're not responsible for what Bush does. We're just looking out for Hudson County. Really, we're the victims here, all of us. We live here, we all lose out. And that Mason - she's a free agent, a loose cannon. She's an asshole. All she did was interfere. She just doesn't fit in.

All we're saying is, we have mutual interests here. A decent investigation takes time. So TAKE time. Don't let this unproven innuendo about the hospital's supposed 'shaky finances' influence the election. That wouldn't be fair. Keep in mind, this is Roberts' last go-round. We're looking for people we can trust, people looking out for Hudson County's best interests, for the future. We want 'reform' as much as anyone. And no one wants problems. But what we don't need are grandstanders like that obnoxious Christie or that snooty Mason. Christie will be gone soon, and no way he gets to be Governor. No one's electing a Republican governor in THIS state. Never happen.

Don't get too big for your britches, and think you're going to unveil some big scandal and be a big hero. That 'name' you think you're making for yourself won't be what gets you elected. We'll take care of the elections, that's what we do. Think your 'name' will go door-to-door in the projects? Will your 'name' hand out street money? Did your 'name' win you the last school board race? Damn right it didn't. So don't try and freelance on us, big shots, there's no percentage in it. Ask Soares and Lenz. They thought they could use us, then screw us. How are they doin' now? So think about it.

When this goes down, it won't be a scandal. The hospital will be a victim of a tough economy. It'll be a well-meant plan that got screwed up by outside forces. Nobody's fault. The press will see it our way, like always. They have to do business here, too.

As for Mason, we know she's been a pain in your ass. Don't sweat it, we got your back. We've seen her type come and go. They just burn out and they disappear, and nobody remembers. Don't worry about her. Remember that woman Senator who stood up to those Monmouth guys? Gone. See, she thought all you needed was to be a 'hero'. But you gotta have friends. Funny how her support dried up right when she needed it most. Her own fault, too. That type doesn't get the Jersey way. That type just doesn't fit in.

Watch. Beth Mason will learn what Senator Karcher learned, and she'll learn it the hard way. You need to be smarter than those two. Team players, they're the ones that survive. You remember that."

Lenz loses. Is anyone surprised?

We don't think ANY sitting 4th Ward Councilman who had the mayor's support has ever lost an election in Hoboken. But Michael 'Super-genius' Lenz and Tony 'You Owe Me!' Soares have at one point or another screwed over everyone* who ever lent them a hand, and in the end, there was just no one left to screw over.

*Except Carol Marsh, who at a gut level processed long ago that the way she could maintain her relationship with those two was by being a total sycophant. So, at the cost of everyone's respect, she has done just that.

Even Zimmer was screwed by this pair. During her mayoral race, Soares had cut a deal with the other side: He'd trade insider information for political prominence. He wasn't going to wait 'till after the election, either - Soares knew full well that political promises are made to be broken. Roberts thus appointed him - a member of the faction opposing his candidate - to the Zoning Board during the campaign, and Soares was named to Cammarrano's transition team. Soares had expected the machine to win, and it didn't disappoint. But then, of course...

Zimmer is, at present, a popular mayor. She even had the opportunity to cherry-pick her candidate, and thus have a sitting councilman of her choosing to back. To top it off, she had won and held the 4th Ward post herself not long ago. This SHOULD have been a cakewalk. So - how did she manage to pull defeat from the jaws of victory?

Well, it's hard to see the virtue of Zimmer appointing the worst politician in Hoboken's history - a man who, as a political veteran, lost an earlier run for the 4th Ward to a complete unknown (Chris Campos, remember?) by a stunning 75-25%. Zimmer supporters have tried to explain the 'wisdom' of this appointment to us, but it was a seat Lenz was destined to lose. Aside from Marsh's loyal lip service, and a few who - like Soares - figured a relationship with Lenz could pay off, Lenz does not have one loyal ally on this planet. And that's exactly what his life's history has earned him.

Make no mistake - Lenz and Soares are a cancer that have eaten away at attempts to change Hoboken for years. Their self-aggrandizing, caustic and slimy politicking have caused many decent, capable people to simply give up. Anyone wondering why 'reform' always fails to take hold in Hoboken need look no further than these two. They're contemptible and worthless.

Zimmer's affiliation with Lenz and Soares is a function of politics - strange bedfellows and all that. But the fact that she placed them in positions where they could seriously damage her shows an alarming failure of judgement. This is what will, no doubt, be her ultimate downfall.

Zimmer has now lost the 4th Ward. She means well, but appointing Lenz was a fatal mistake. Now her attempts to bring Hoboken under fiscal control are pretty much doomed to fall under the weight of a surge of political infighting. Blood's in the waters, and the churning for position will be all-engulfing. Lenz and Soares are rats on a sinking ship (though real rats, at least, never sink a ship themselves). They will scurry about seeking new driftwood to cling to. Marsh now has not even the illusion of any support she can call her own, and will have to place a Reporter ad for a new Svengali.

Know what they call a Hoboken mayor who does not control the 4th Ward? A lame duck.

RELATED: What should you do when you lose an election?

What is Palin planning?

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Found on the site of New Jersey's own Dan Riehl:

There are at least two significant disconnects between Sarah Palin's Nashville rhetoric and reality. Her full speech available here. While her biggest fans might not mind, it does seem fair to ask just how candid she's being. On the one hand, Palin insists the movement should be leaderless.

NASHVILLE — The burgeoning tea party movement should remain leaderless and decentralized, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Saturday, calling the effort “bigger than any king or queen of the tea party.”

“Put your faith in ideas. I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by one leader or operation,” she told the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. The small government movement is “a ground-up call to action that’s forcing both parties to change the way they’re doing business. This is about the people.”

That all sounds good. Unfortunately, unless she's totally oblivious to the star power that earned her 100k for her speech last night, she seems on track to become that very thing.

This weekend, it's Nashville, but in March, I'll head to Searchlight, Nev., for the kickoff rally at the Tea Party Express III. In April, I'll be in Boston for a Tea Party gathering there. Across the country, tea-partiers will be sharing our vision for America's future, a vision that promotes common sense solutions to out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch political establishment.

At the very least, it strikes me as a bit coy for Palin to suggest the movement doesn't need a leader, while looking as though she's planning to become it at the same time.

The problem with Palin's statement might be that it's disingenuous, and her hidden agenda is to be made a leader of the Tea Partiers. (One could argue that this has already happened, de facto.)

But it's even worse if it's not, since it suggests a profound ignorance of human history. Humans ALWAYS set other humans above them as leaders. It's how we behave, as a social species. (The fact that these leaders generally aren't worth crap is irrelevant. We do it ANYWAY.)

A third possibility, though, is that Palin is sincere and wants to use her influence ONLY to forestall the (inevitable) anointing of Tea Party leaders. Along these lines, she definitely wants the movement to come less under the sway of Republicans (who increasingly want to be associated with it) and more a place for 'independents' and even - gasp - Democrats. If Republican leaders emerged as Tea Party heads, that would end its attractiveness to third parties.

Since the Republican Party pretty much failed Palin (from her POV anyway), I can see where she'd be looking for a new political base. The Tea Party (gee, Democratic Party... Republican Party... Tea Party...) is that base. But she's still seen as a "Republican", and if she takes the stance of a Tea Party leader now, the Tea Party will be seen, and become, a club for Republicans. It's too soon for Palin to 'move in' as it were - but note how she's been severing her Republican ties. Not burning bridges, just getting some distance. And notice also how she loves bringing up her husband's LACK of Republican affiliation.

So, I think she's got her foot firmly in the door, but she's not ready to take a place at the table. On the other hand, she doesn't want anyone ELSE at the head of that table, either.

It's an interesting situation.

Political map of America

Explains a lot, don't it?

How David Lynch goes fishing

Won't mean much to you, perhaps, unless you're one of those rare people who truly does go fishing for ideas.

Why does the world keep lying about Tony Soares?

"I can't believe my eyes!" "Well, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

We were reminded of that old Groucho Marx bit by the reactions of Tony Soares to some of the recent stories on him.

When Dawn Zimmer did not name Soares to her vacant 4th Ward seat, witnesses saw Soares outside the council chambers accosting the new mayor, and demanding his political payoff. "You owe me!" he shouted.

Never happened, says Soares (scroll down to the Update section). Those witnesses were just a pack of liars, no doubt sent by Soares' political enemies to besmirch his fine name.

Of course, Beth Mason had a similar experience when she refused to hand Soares control of her first run for Council. But she could just be another liar.

Also lying, says Soares, are the people who claim to have seen him ripping down Mason for Mayor posters. He 'proved' they were lying, too, by explaining in a press release that he was too short to reach the posters. (Apparently in his 50 years on the planet he has never learned how to stand on a box.)

People, people, people. Who are you gonna believe, Soares or your own lying eyes?

It ain't we, babe

Seeing posts by 'Mister Snitch' on nj.com? It's not us.

Recently Smarty Jones alerted us to a post attributed to 'Mister Snitch' on nj.com. The post specifically mentioned a meetiing between local slimebag Tony Soares and Dawn Zimmer. The purpose of said meeting was, presumably, to offer Soares some position of authority (probably a Freeholder slot).

It's not us. We haven't posted on nj.com in years, and we very rarely read it. The place is a foul stew of innuendo, lies, posturing, fraud, and character assassination. The culprit? Probably Soares himself, doing a little self-promotion. It would not be the first time Soares has tried to use us when he needs to borrow steal a cup of integrity.

The last time we were there actively, ages ago, Soares was posting under multiple names, including MikeyRox. (This was when Soares was out of office and politically dead.) MikeyRox loved Michael Russo beyond reason, praising him to the skies. MikeyRox wanted Russo to run for mayor in the worst way, and, by the way, thought Soares and Marsh should be 'in the mix' of candidates on his slate. This went on day after day after day. Then one day, MikeyRox and several other posters posted the EXACT same message - word for word, cut and paste - one after the other. We emailed Soares, telling him people would see through his multiple posting scheme if he was that sloppy.

All the cloned postings immediately vanished.

A similar business happened after Scott Delea's first campaign. Soares/Lenz/Marsh demanded that Delea endorse their slate. When he didn't, ugly messages began appearing on his website, drowning out all discussion. But Delea is in the internet ad business, so he's pretty net-savvy. He easily discovered that all the nastiness was coming from Soares' work address. He sent Soares a cease-and-desist email, threatening to inform his employer. Soares scurried back into the woodwork, and the trolling ceased.

We would not be surprised at all if Soares were put up for Freeholder or some similar position. He's always had the makings of an HCDO wiseguy.

UPDATE: Smarty Jones writes us to say that the nj.com boards aren't the chat-sewer they once were. We don't go anymore, so we don't know. All we know is, someone there is playing off our name. That's enough sleaze to keep us away, no matter how 'reformed' the joint may be otherwise.

UPDATE 2: It probably is NOT Soares posing as us on the nj.com boards. Because whoever it is, is linking to some posts that are VERY unflattering to him.

Do we feel badly about having accused him? Nah. After years of this kind of behavior (all the while denying every instance - even when caught red-handed), Soares has thoroughly earned his rep as a lowlife slimeball. Pull enough fire alarms and you become known as the guy who pulls fire alarms. Soon you become the first suspect for every false alarm, and whose fault is that?

Stop the presses

"The [Jersey City City Council] is a... joke... the worst administration in the city's history."

That unusually strong statement appeared in today's Jersey Journal. They also mention that "too many of the city's lawmakers are also on the county payroll".

All this has been the case for quite some time, of course. (We do wonder what the "acceptible number" of city officials on the county payroll would be.)

The occasion that apparently caused the veils to fall from the Journal's eyes was the guilty plea of Phillip Kenny, who was not part of the recent FBI sting, but nevertheless was found guilty of taking $5000 in bribes. The paper is 'surprised' because Kenny 'exuded sincerity'. The paper, in fact, endorsed his election. (Their embarrassment at being so transparently and completely wrong, rather than any newly-discovered zeal for investigative reporting, was almost certainly what precipitated the editorial. In other words: This was butt-covering.)

It's quite a claim to say the current administration is the 'worst in Jersey City's history'. This is the city that spawned Boss Hague, after all. But you don't get a situation this bad unless you have a God-awful newspaper. The kind that's regularly 'shocked and surprised' by revelations of corruption. But the Journal would be surprised much less often if it were not so busy willfully turning a blind eye to the rampant corruption taking place all over the county, every single day. It's no surprise to us that not a single one of the 44 arrested in the recent FBI sting (nor Kenny) had been a target of a Journal investigative report prior to their arrest.

It remains the worst newspaper on the planet.

WTF?

The Wisconsin Tourism Federation finally gets the joke.

What can we tall ya? Your government in action.

RELATED: This never happened to Paul Rand.

Zimmer speaks!

And you know, she REALLY shouldn't.

Dawn Zimmer had a fundraiser the other day, and a couple of her remarks cry out for comment.

"I'm the most transparent mayor Hoboken has ever had."

That's the kind of statement that's a bit difficult to refute - it's a matter of opinion, after all. Except that, uh, she's been mayor for about five minutes now, so that's not much to measure. Hell, you could stack her in-office record up against Peter Cammarano's for all you could learn from it. (Remember, Cammarano was caught stuffing money into his trunk BEFORE he took the oath.) More to the point of this post, though, is the depressing lack of knowledge of and respect for Hoboken's history that she betrays.

Hoboken, after all, elected The Wackiest Mayor in America. While Zimmer does come across refreshingly unscripted (she looks as if she downed too many Red Bulls while Phyllis Diller did her hair), she's got nothing on the legendary Tom Vezzetti. Zimmer hasn't actually been elected yet, and when she (inevitably) is, outside circumstances will have played a major role. But when Vezzetti was elected, it was clearly because Hoboken believed that a (painfully) badly-dressed but extremely gracious man who shuffled around town with a bullhorn could be nothing but EXACTLY what he seemed. He was the very embodiment of transparency, making Zimmer look positively Machiavellian by comparison.

The more significant historical gaffe, though, was this bit:

"I want to keep working to restore the fiscal situation in Hoboken..."

Uh.... 'restore' what?? She's obviously not talking about her immediate predecessor, since Cammarano was only around long enough for a cup of coffee before they came with the 'cuffs. Is Dave Roberts' administration her standard for fiscal stability? Considering the fact that he started out spending more than he had, and left the city a basket case, let's rule that out - for Zimmer's sake.

Perhaps she's referring to the situation Roberts inherited from his predecessor. Are we 'restoring' the city's fiscal situation to the state of affairs under Russo, who routinely sold off city assets to pay the bills until he was run out of office and was then, of course, arrested for numerous fiscal misdeeds? Hey - there's a campaign slogan: 'Bringing Back the Good Old Russo Days'.

Pasculli, before Russo? Nope, he was just a placeholder after Vezetti's death. Vezzetti, then? We think it was a look at the city's books that killed him. Vezzetti inherited the city that Steve Cappiello ran, so don't look for hope there, either.

Fact is, Hoboken's history has been that half the books are crooked, while the other half is missing. State oversight? Please, girlfriend. You're in Jersey!

Those with no sense of history are doomed to repeat it, and that's what we've always sensed from Zimmer. In the end, she'll give us more of the same-as-it-ever-was. It's unsurprising that a woman who campaigned to 'end the flooding in her ward', despite the fact that Hoboken (built at sea level, mostly on landfill) has always flooded, would make such empty statements.

Beth Mason's probably running for mayor

And she's probably going to lose.

Before we get into this, you need to indulge us in a little philosophizing.

The key to being successful in your endeavors, whether you're a sculptor, an inventor, or a marketing strategist, isn't talent. Talent's important, sure, but what's really key is the ability to say 'no' to a client, or to refuse a job outright. The world is full of bad ideas, bad products, and people who just generally want to waste your time.

If you need to live in the poor part of town, take a second job, or eat nothing but baloney sandwiches for the luxury of 'no', that's what you need to do. Of course, most people don't run their lives that way:

Jack Sprocket, of Jack Sprocket, Inc., walks into Joe Blow's Ad Agency and demands to know what Joe will do to market his new cog. Blow picks up the cog, studies it, and says, 'Well, first off, I'll have to advise you to design a better cog.' Sprocket, outraged, vows to take his business elsewhere and steams out the door.

You probably know what's true/not true about that little scenario without our telling you. (But we'll tell you anyway.) No head of an ad agency is going to risk insulting a potential new client that way. On the other hand, a client thus insulted probably will head elsewhere.

The average ad agency client expects to enter into a relationship in which (s)he is top dog. He expects to hear what he wants to hear, he expects the agency to deliver anything he demands, and he expects to be dominant and serviced in every aspect. In other words, the only meaningful difference between this relationship and that of a hooker and her John is that the latter arrangement is more straightforward.

The agency head, for his part, wants to keep his staff generating money. He's got a payroll to meet, greens fees, a mortgage, office rent, kids in private schools, and a mistress. To him, the client and his problem are just a means for paying the bills.

Sounds like business as usual, right? Yeah, pretty much. So what's the problem?

The problem is, both parties' priorities are wrong. Specifically, no one wants to address the issue of the cog. So a campaign is launched to sell a lousy product. The public buys it, but they're not thrilled about it.

Jack Sprocket wants to know why his ad money hasn't gotten him a larger market share. Joe Blow says they need to spend more on marketing. Sprocket complains that all Blow wants to do is bleed him. Blow grumbles (but mostly to himself) about the lousy product he has to sell. The relationship deteriorates. Eventually, Sprocket finds a new agency, or Blow resigns the account. It's the cycle of life in the ad biz.

Now let's backtrack. Say Jack and Joe are different kinda people. They meet, and Joe tells Jack he's got to build a better sprocket, or he can't take him on as a client. Jack's never had an agency treat him this way, but he can look down the road, and realizes that fixing the problem - now - is the best course for the long run.

Now and then, such things DO happen. But they rarely happen in the moral sewers of Hudson County business relationships.

And that brings us, finally, to Beth Mason.

Beth Mason has hired a Hudson County 'political advisor'. The woods are full of them, and they're pretty much all alike. All of them hope to snag HCDO-backed clients, where the fix is in and they can chalk up a win. They don't care about what policies or slimy pols they peddle, or their public impact once the election's over. The guy Mason just hired had previously foisted Peter Cammarano (the bribe-taking, freshly-arrested-ex-Mayor) on Hoboken. He'd also created one of the most vile campaigns ever seen (even by Hudson County standards) for 'reformer' Carol Marsh. (The stench of it still clings to her.)

He's not going to tell Beth Mason to get her cog fixed. He's going to tell her what she wants to hear: That she can win.

Except that she CAN'T win. And she needs a new cog.

One can pretty easily imagine how Mason, with helpful input from her advisor, internally rationalized her second mayoral race this year:

• Zimmer would be tougher to beat after having been Mayor a few years - so now's the time to run.

• She has to run again now, to remain a potent political force.

• She knows who she can/cannot trust this time, so she won't make the same mistakes.

• The vote that went to Cammarano is an anti-ZImmer vote, which Mason can pick up.

Whether or not any or all of those rationales are valid, here's what they have in common:

NONE of them demonstrate why a Mason run for Mayor at this time is good for Hoboken.

Mason is selling a damaged cog. If her advisor gave a damn about her, or Hoboken, or anything besides his spurious rep and his bottom line, he'd tell her to fix it before doing anything else. He'd tell her NOT to run.

But of course, he WON'T do that. Mason's a high-profile job and a fat payday, and that's all he cares about.

Since WE have no payday at risk, we can tell Mason exactly what she needs to do now, and for the next few years:

• STEP ONE: She needs to announce, immediately, that she is NOT running for mayor. She needs to state clearly that she has decided not to run because her entry into the race would merely raise the stakes and force Zimmer to raise more money. Which, in Hudson County, means Zimmer would owe more favors.

In addition, she should state that Hoboken is exhausted from the previous election, runoff, and arrest of the new mayor. Not to mention all the city's other (considerable) problems. She will step aside for that consideration, as well.

This would be generally acknowledged as an honest and selfless gesture, since it involves obvious sacrifice on Mason's part. Even Zimmer's allies would be forced to concede this. It's not an easy move, but it's a vital part of the process by which Mason fixes her cog.

Mason has foolishly placed so much trust in self-serving, carpetbagging consultants over the past few years that she's completely forgotten what she SHOULD be trusting: The common sense of the people of Hoboken. And that's exactly the sad, self-defeating message she's been subliminally sending to Hoboken's public: She believes the only way they'll ever do the right thing is to be hustled, tricked and manipulated into it. The inevitable result is that Hoboken doesn't trust her, either.

The public no longer sees Beth Mason. (It may be that even Beth Mason no longer sees Beth Mason.) All anyone sees of her is the cloud of machinations, illusions, marketing and media-moments conjured up by a parade of ultimately clueless, caustic advisors. There's no longer any there, there.

It's seductive, the position of a marketing client such as Mason in relation to her paid advisor. People jump at your command, you're told comforting things and follow comforting formulas to (presumed) success. But a famous definition of insanity is 'trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different result'. And that's where Mason's headed.

It's time she asks herself a simple question: Who managed Tom Vezzetti's image? Who coiffed his hair, chose his wardrobe, administered his message, and created the PR that won him the mayor's seat? If the answer is 'nobody', it's time for her to consider why she keeps letting the tail wag her dog. She needs to get her priorities straight, and get back to basics. What it's NOT time for is another campaign that's doomed to be as God-awful as her last one. She'll emerge with only the public's resentment for having put them through it.

It's a long, long road to fixing that cog. It begins with Mason stepping away from this race, for the good of the town. And for her own good, too, because two losses in a row WOULD be political suicide. Beth Mason has a serious problem, and the first step in addressing it is recognizing her situation for what it is.

• STEP TWO: Get back to pure 'reform' - not spurious 'deals' and alliances - as Job One.

This is what the public needs and wants to see, but it's not without its political angles.

First off: Zimmer's going to be the mayor. She'll have the advantages of the office, but at the cost of 'reformer' street cred. That's inevitable, regardless of how well or badly she does. Mason will be the standard-bearer of the town's loyal opposition, while Zimmer and her gang (many of whom are already well-known to be in the HCDO's pocket) will increasingly be associated with the town's problems, rather than the hope for any solutions. And those problems WILL get worse under the HCDO-constrained Zimmer, as Jersey's general economic environment continues to deteriorate. That's bad for Hoboken, but potentially good for Mason's political ambitions.

Second: Mason would do well to place special focus on issues that Zimmer will be unable to face honestly, and are likely to become bigger issues going forward. She should keep pressing on the local hospital, in particular. It's a money-laundering operation and patronage mill designed to serve Boss Menendez. Inevitably, like the UMDNJ scandal, its problems will become too big to disguise. In the meantime, though, Zimmer allies like her attack-dog Peter Cunningham, are too deeply compromised to confront the fraud. This amounts to an opportunity for Mason to build credibility, even as the 'former reformers' around Zimmer destroy their own.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

One day, Mason will need to strike new alliances for a fresh run for mayor. If she cleans up her act, she can do this from a position of strength which she has lacked in her previous attempts. She'd do well to block out some time and read a bio of Churchill written from a political perspective. (Churchill held fast to his ideals when they were unpopular, and waited for them to come into vogue.) Or she could look to Jersey City, where woebegone Governor Jon Corzine has recently been obliged to approach, hat in hand, 'outsider' pol Steve Fulop in hopes of borrowing a cup of scarce election-year integrity. With sadness, we note that no one looks to Beth Mason for the same.

Why Tony Soares won't sue (anyone, ever) for defamation

Permanently-outraged Tony Soares finds yet another target to threaten. But as usual, Soares' bluster means less than nothing.

As noted in Al Sullivan's 9/6/09 column, Tony Soares has another Internet flame war going on. This one's with the Hudson Shark, who Soares has 'revealed' to be Tom Bertoli. Bertoli's known as a Russo backer, and no friend of Soares for sure.

Last time we looked, Soares was trying desperately (that might as well be his middle name) to work his way back into the graces of the Zimmer camp. Soares, with his customary political acumen, had declared the Zimmerites losers and was running headlong into the open arms of the Cammarano camp when, er, Cammarano got arrested. Soares backtracked so fast he nearly got whiplash.

With the Zimmer contingent now in power, Soares wants to demonstrate his loyalty and value to them in his usual fashion: The relentless posting of online sleaze under various names, all in the name of 'reform' and designed to enhance the acting Mayor's position.

Bertoli, for his part, denies being 'The Hudson Shark' and says:

"If Tony sues me for defamation of character, I'll sue him for lack of character."

Yeah, that's about right.

Soares has threatened any number of Hoboken citizens with defamation suits. He's threatened us, too. But he'll never do it, because a lawsuit would violate his modus operandi.

For many years, Soares has spent his days (usually anonymously) spreading innuendo, half-truths and outright lies for one self-interested purpose or another. He operates in the shadows, from the safety of distance, where he never can be called upon to back up his attacks with substance. But in a lawsuit, he'd have to stand like a man and face his accuser. (Or - more likely - his accusers.) In a court of law he'd have no place to hide, and Soares is just not equipped to deal with that.

Tackling tough problems head-on is just not Soares' thing. His style is the sucker-punch, the hit-and-run, the blindside blow. He prefers his fish in a barrel. While in office, Soares faced a vote on a raise for Hoboken's cops. He had campaigned, as had his running-mate Carol Marsh, against rubber-stamping raises for city employees. But Soares knew that voting the raise down would turn the cops' ire against him. So, while Marsh voted against the raise and took the subsequent heat, Soares left his ally holding the bag - alone - by abstaining.

Soares has doublecrossed more people than he cares to count. Folks in his condo and at his workplace (he's been known to threaten his employers with lawsuits, too) loathe him. Taxi drivers dread picking him up. He consistently ranks lower in local phone surveys than pols who've done jail time. He's been banned outright from more than one local blog. He's trashed and slandered former supporters, permanently alienating at least one former campaign manager we know of.

The thought of standing up in open court and facing even a fraction of the people he's screwed in his life terrifies Soares. He's not suing anyone for defamation - ever. Because, as Tom Bertoli suggests - what happens when they sue him back?

The Wile E. Coyote market maneuver

Notes on the imminent collapse of the US equities market.

First let's get the heavy lifting out of the way. Then we can have some fun, 'cause it's a whole lot easier to find the comedy in the tragedy if the tragedy's not happening to YOU. So, the first order of business must be to get you in the driver's seat of the steamroller, rather than leave you stumbling around blindly in front of it.

Long story short: The market's setting up for a sudden move down. You won't exactly find this in the technical tea leaves, and that's why most investors will miss it. (Just as most investors missed the beginning of this move up, and missed last year's big collapse, too. The market's a herd, following the same information right off a cliff. But there ARE other ways to analyze the market, and that's what we're about today.)

The chart below shows the S&P from April up to last Friday, August 28th. The red lines at right show our projections for the next few weeks. It's a wide chart, and you may want to click on it to see details.

UPDATE: We have revised our expectations for the downside and the rebound, marked on the chart as (I) and (J). We expect the market won't fall much past 843 (S&P), and will rebound to about 906 (though we expect to see some quick deterioration from the rebound high in the days following this move). The numbers are based on the recent movement of the Shanghai Composite Index, which has behaved in a manned similar to the US markets this year. We consider its behavior a fairly reliable forecaster of what we can expect in the days and weeks ahead.



Going through this alphabetically:

(A) is where the market was on Friday, August 28. The green box shows we are in a period where the market has plateaued, and is in fact slowly trending down.

(B) shows a previous plateau, from June. Here again, the market could not push above a certain level.

(C) shows the immediate aftermath of the plateau, with the market trending down heavily. This market is being heavily shorted, and this move attracted a great deal of short interest.

(D) shows the impact of heavy short-covering and an investor base that has been trained, by the market action since March, to BUY ON DIPS.

(E) projects a continuation of the current downtrend.

(F) projects a likely increase in the downtrend, attracting short interest as noted in (C).

(G) projects the same results shown in (D), and an upward trend culminating somewhere above S&P 1054.

(H) This uptrend represents the end of the rally, with a rapid (about two weeks) move down to somewhere around S&P 843, and a bounceback (I) and leveling-off (J) at around S&P 906.

If you've been watching this market, there are a couple of obvious questions you should be asking: Why will the market plunge this way? Why won't it drift off to new lows? Or, why won't it just climb to a new level, as it has after dips since March?

The reason the market keeps climbing on dips is a combination of speculation and short-covering. This is the essence of a market bubble, or a bear-market rally (same thing) like this one. A market with this mindset simply CANNOT drift off. Bears waited a couple of years for the dotcom bubble to drift off, and it never did. Instead, it spiked and popped. As will this one.

The more compelling question is: Why will THIS move be the last move up? What will change? Well, essentially NOTHING will change - except the result. We'll have a dip, and a strong move up, but THIS upmove will be followed with a loud thud.

The reason we will get a different outcome for this upcycle is threefold:

(1) The market has been strongly conditioned, over the past few months, to buy on dips.
(2) Shorts are as determined as ever, but they have been likewise conditioned to cover quickly, on any hint of an upswing. They're on a hairtrigger.
(3) The trading is noticeably thin right now. There simply are not a lot of participants remaining. Most investors have taken their profits and have moved to the sidelines.

Here's what this adds up to: The market now is poised so that an unusually large percentage of its participants will move in the same direction. At first, the remaining herd will sell off reluctantly and uncertainly, feeling that a fresh move up could begin at any moment. Then selling will tick up. At some point the crowd will spot a shift in sentiment, and those who sold off will buy back in quickly and decisively on the dip. Shorts will cover just as quickly, injecting more upside pressure. This move up will be very strong, since there will be few sellers interrupting it along the way. At that point this will be a market united, moving upward as one.

In the immediate aftermath of the hard push up, however, as the prices start to drift down, the market action will again shift quickly. This time, it will produce an unusually large percentage of sellers. The powerful move and fresh high will insure profit-taking, and many sellers will anticipate a step back down (to be followed by another surge up in accordance with recent market behavior). The problem is - with the market all moving as one on the way up, and then either selling or at most holding existing positions - who's left to buy?

Nobody, that's who.

With buyers cleared out, prices will do what they always do when there is insufficient demand: They will move down. But now we will have reached a key saturation point where a large number of stop-loss orders will be triggered. New buyers, who might have entered on a drift-down, will see prices falling with increasing speed, and will hold back (waiting for someone else to buy first, or for better technical numbers). Before long, the market will become a falling knife that no one will touch.

That's how a bubble bursts, and the market now appears properly set up for this plunge to begin. We have a thin number of traders who have been well-conditioned to move in the same way by the recent market behavior.

We believe the bottom is somewhere around S&P 800, with a bounceback of around 25% of the plunge. That's the end of Phase One of this three-phase market move to the bottom. (We'll explore Phases Two and Three at some future date.)

If you are buying an ETF to track the lower prices, we suggest bidding only fractionally under the previous 52-week lows. The market will go well under those lows, but the pricing action will be swift and furious - and you may not get your bid. If you miss the swing, you'll never catch up to it, and you'll miss the whole move down. Keep that in mind.

What if we're wrong, and there's another swing up?

Glad you asked, shows you're paying attention. Fortunately, this market should offer another swing down before it shoots back up again, so you can extricate yourself without too much damage. You're better off, though, focusing on the market swing you could miss by not acting, rather than the mistake you could be making by acting here. Fear of going against the crowd is something one must overcome to become a successful investor. (Or, one might argue, a successful human being.) If you're struggling with this, congratulations. You have met the enemy, and he is you.

Now notice what we DIDN'T say

You may notice that we didn't refer to Fibonacci retracement numbers or technical analysis, or any such crap, in this post. That's because such things ARE crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. Well, OK: They're useful in certain circumstances at certain times. But these things are, in reality, crutches, and are often absolutely useless when they are most needed. Look at what happened in the market just last year. The entire world had these tools, yet most everyone lost money anyway.

CRAP.

There are more frauds posing as investment advisers than there are ambulance-chasing lawyers. The next time you're tempted to PAY someone for advice, ask yourself: If he knows so much about the market, how the hell come he needs my money?

(Notice, while you're at it, that OUR advice is free. Which either means it's worthless - a distinct possibility, BTW - or we just don't need your money, thanks anyway.)

Now, this is a question would-be investors should have asked themselves about Bernie Madoff. The really successful hedge fund guys won't take your money most of the time. It's only once in a while, when the market's really down, that there's a break in the big hedge funds and they'll take fresh money. And even then, you oughta ask the question. Really, what you need to do is find a Jim Rodgers or Warren Buffet just starting out. Assuming of course you have the instincts to identify such folk.

A lot of people come to more or less this same conclusion, and decide that what they really need to do is to develop their own instincts as investors. Unfortunately, what happens to a lot of them is that they fall into a dependence on a whole different type of crutch and trap. They don't fall prey to a jingo-spouting investment charlatan, but instead they get trapped by a self-perpetuating system.

The Motley Fool and Investors' Business Daily are two examples of such systems. They way they work is rather cultlike: If the system fails you, it's because you didn't use it properly. If you're losing money in the market, IBD will tell you you're not applying their rules correctly. You're not cutting your losses quick enough, or you're not letting yur winners run, or you can't tell the difference between a cup-and-handle and a head-and-shoulders. The Motley Fool will tell you you're not patient enough, or you don't recognize the changing marketplace for whatever your stock's company produces.

Which brings us to the real point here: Instead of hewing to some guru or philosophy, develop your own damn convictions. Easier said than done? Probably. Most folks are convinced they already think for themselves, and are masters of their own destinies. Alas, the example of the investor community (not to mention every other community we've ever studied) puts the lie to this self-absorbed notion. If investors were truly masters of their own destinies, they would not have marched like lemmings off the stock market cliff last year. Or off the real-estate cliff a few years ago. Or... well, trust us: Examples of the mob mentality rampant in the marketplace, and nearly everywhere else, are virtually endless.

Fleshing out the inherent nature of the struggle for true self-determination in its entirety would fill a book - a far larger task than we care to embrace today. (Maybe tomorrow we'll feel more ambitious.) For the remainder of THIS post we'll content ourselves with a few blithe observations of human nature, as they relate to the current market situation. Situationally-aware instinct is the place from whence springs the best investment (and life) decisions, and that is what we care to discover and nurture.

Let's start with a simple question:

Why does Wile E. Coyote keep buying ACME products, anyway?

Now there's a question the world REALLY wants answered. (And you thought you were wasting your time here!) But what does this have to do with the current market? Plenty.

We were fairly sure that the true reason for Wile E.'s unusual devotion to products synonymous with failure had never been explored, but we took a quick look at the usual sources. We found answers offered here, here, here, here and here.

Many of the answers were entertaining, some were pragmatic ("because a cartoon is supposed to be funny") and few were demonstrably wrong, but only one approached the truth:



"Because he was a Genius."

And that's exactly right. Wile E. Coyote kept buying ACME products because that's the only way that any self-respecting Super-Genius (especially one who had business cards to that effect printed up) would go after the Road Runner.

For all his trouble, Wile E. Coyote could have easily eaten quite well, if that was his entire concern. But his ego demanded that he demonstrate his superior intellect. No matter that he would be demonstrating it to his intended victim, who would (presumably) soon be in no position to spread the tale of his conquest. Ego is the enemy of logic, and must be served at any price.

OK, maybe you understand Mr. Coyote's problem a bit better, but you still don't understand what that has to do with the equities market.

Well, how many offers have you seen for a method to BEAT the market? How many times have you seen a SURE THING promoted? How many people, on telling you of their market exploits, have told you how they bought at the bottom and sold at the top, making a KILLING?

Now - how many offers have you had from people willing to help you UNDERSTAND the market, through study and by better understanding and controlling YOURSELF?

We'd bet you've seen a countless number of the former, and damn few of the latter. And that's the coyote's perpetual fate - searching endlessly for that vainglorious method of vanquishing his - uh, dinner. Never once does it occur to him that he should try studying and understanding the Road Runner to achieve his goals.

Great investors like Jim Rogers urge study and self-understanding as the keys to successful investing. Others offer ACME-like methods, systems, 'advice', gimmicks, and sure-fire tips. As you'd expect, ACME's methods get 99% of the traffic. Yet despite the fact that 99% of investors lose money, few ever seem to draw the obvious conclusion.

All great comedy is based on keen observation of human nature. The Coyote amuses us because he keeps making the same error, ever-hopefully and ever-obliviously, over and over and over. Likewise, there are patterns in market behavior (which is, after all, HUMAN behavior) that a keen observer may exploit. One such pattern, a splendid example of which we saw at the end of the dotcom bubble, is playing out in the markets now.

Those Wile E. Investors are at it again.

Peter Cammarano: The most honest man in town

An abject lesson in etiquette for the ambitious Hudson County power pol.

For one brief, shining moment, mayor-for-five-minutes Peter Cammarano was the most honest man in Hoboken.

That moment came about when he told a man he thought to be a developer that, for him to do business in Hudson County, The Powers-That-Be (i.e., him) would have to get a taste.

Truthier than that, it does not get. And this fact of local life should hardly shock anyone living in a town where 2 of the last 3 mayors have gone to jail. For those who never ever read a paper or turned on The Sopranos, Tom Vezetti once marched up and down the streets with a bullhorn, airing Hoboken's dirty laundry. Listen quietly, and the buildings and streets themselves will whisper of the troubles they've seen. There's no way NOT to know.

So, when the Cammarano tapes were made known, why did the public and media trot out their best Captain Renault impressions?

The fact is, average Hudson County denizens KNOW the local elections are largely predetermined. They know about the envelopes full of money. They know the Hoboken hospital is designed for laundering cash (as was the UMDNJ before it), they know about payola, they know the books are cooked, they know the relatives and asshole-buddies are on the take. They know damn well the fix is in, because it's never NOT in. Cammarano didn't cross any uncrossable lines in this regard. It wasn't the cash in his car trunk that gave a whole town an enema. It was his frank talk about business as usual - and the fact that it made the papers - that pushed people's buttons. Sure, go ahead and steal from us - we're used to it - but at least respect us enough to pretend it's not happening.

Mind you, it's embedded in Hudson County's wiseguy culture that there's no point in being connected (politically or otherwise) unless you FLAUNT it. Same way there's no point in pulling down deep six figures and driving a Dodge Neon. A real wiseguy ain't putting a coin in that parking meter. He parks where he likes, and as he saunters out of that bistro with his friends, he makes a show of tearing up that ticket. Better still - he tells them over their unhurried lunch that no cop in town would dare give him a ticket. Sure enough, in the apres-bistro glow they see his windshield is pristine. That's Jersey bliss. Fuhgetaboutit.

That's why a lot of the midlevel wiseguys and wannabe power-brokers prefer The Malibu to the smoky back room. In the back room, you're hiding from somebody, but in The Malibu, you ARE somebody. You can say whatever you want, and you don't care who hears you. This is YOUR town. Nobody's gonna stop you - except maybe for a high-five - you big-time, important PLAYA, you.

The older hands, like Menendez and Corzine, know their profile is so high that there's someone, somewhere, watching their every move. That is to say - someone who actually has the juice, and the motivation, to take them down. They have mastered the art of more subtle exercises of power, which from their high stations need consist of nothing more than denying access to the levers they control. Those who can manipulate and crush others as easily as you or I tie our shoes are beyond mundane forms of bragging. They manipulate others through fear, despite demons of their own. They're well aware of the fragile nature of their power. At any moment, a skeleton could slip out of the closet, and suddenly - they're McGreeveyed.

Had Cammarano been subtler, making do with a wink and a nod, he'd have survived at least until his trial. But with his braggadocio splashed across front pages not just locally but country-wide, his higher-ups felt uncomfortably exposed. They had to demonstrate their opposition to this sort of thing (though, leave us face it, they're anything but opposed) and lower their profile, so they took Cammarano aside and gave him his orders: Resign. Now. And that was that. Had he gone against them, he'd have been a man without a party. For a career political soldier like Cammarano, that's suicide.

Cammarano should have known better. When David Roberts, his predecessor, told his appointees to the Parking Authority that Hoboken was about 'jobs, power, and money', he honestly thought he was just imparting some cracker-barrel political wisdom. But when word spread, and people took the phrase quite badly, he denied saying it.

Perhaps the lesson of Roberts' gaffe was too subtle for Cammarano to absorb. In which case, he should have observed the more extreme example of Jersey City councilman Stephen Lipski about a year back. If you're unaware of Lipski's transgressions, let's just say that he did openly and in public what Hudson County pols usually do only in (relative) privacy. As with Cammarano (who did with his mouth what Lipski did with his, er, other part), the anti-halo effect of Lipski's behavior obliged the County bosses to heave him under the bus.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

So Zimmer has been ushered into office, at least until a November special election. What does this mean? Well, it's obvious what many WANT it to mean: That corruption in Hoboken has been dramatically, almost magically, vanquished. Then again, many also want the recent stock market move to mean that our economic problems are over. Regardless of such wishful thinking, it's evident that the real City Hall, and the real economy, will manifest themselves in the months ahead. In both cases, it's unlikely to be pretty.

Smarty Jones writes:

"I am still [holding] out hope for Dawn. She's the closest thing to a real person in that office in a while. And you don't need to be Lincoln to do some good. All you have to do is be decent. Decency over competence, because we need the former that badly."

Point well taken. We feel the same way. Nevertheless, she'll fail, for reasons we're about to go into.

Again, from Mr. Jones:

"[Zimmer shifted] powers [to appoint Zoning Board members] from the mayor's office to the City Council. That's significant and telling and perhaps foreshadowing other good things."

Anyone following the Cammarano case should remember that zoning was more or less at the heart of the matter. By appointing the Board, Cammarano was telling developers that he controlled the fate of their projects. So if they wanted to move forward and build anything, they had to let him wet his beak.

Mr. Jones believes that, because Zimmer moved immediately to end the practice of the mayor appointing the Zoning Board, she showed that she'd be a mayor who would move decisively to confront corruption. And we agree, it's a good thing. But we have two major reservations:

1) Zimmer is actually CAMPAIGNING for mayor right now. This highly-visible move is more along the lines of a campaign stunt - anyone in her position would have done the same, with the possibility of rescinding the move (under one pretext or other) after the election.

We're not saying she WILL call backsies after November. We're just saying that a highly symbolic gesture that spoke to aspects of the Cammarano story is no surprise. But let's set that aside - we mention it mainly because it's so obvious. It's our second reservation that we find troubling.

2) Those already on the Zoning Board are expected to answer to the mayor, who in turn answers to the Hudson County political bosses. With Cammarano gone, all that's changed is that the middleman has been cut out.

One recent Zoning Board appointee is greasebag Tony Soares, named at the near-eleventh hour by outgoing mayor (and steadfast Cammarano/HCDO man) David Roberts. Which of the two following statements do you suppose Roberts might have made to Soares?

HYPOTHETICAL STATEMENT 1: "Remember, what Cammarano and I both want is for you to vote for the best possible project. We expect you to reject any and all political influence or pressure, even if it comes from Peter or me."

HYPOTHETICAL STATEMENT 2: "Remember, this is probably your last chance EVER to show us you can play ball, so if you start freelancing or getting cute in the press, it's over. When Peter or I tell you a project's going through, it goes through. Period. Your job is to attack any opposing votes, or any whining 'reformers'. Got it?"

'Reformer' Soares was obviously appointed to deliver an HCDO-friendly vote. Zimmer need not have an HCDO-friendly agenda herself - the Board already has its marching orders. 'Reform' of the Zoning Board can only take place by replacing its members. But would Zimmer replace Soares, who worked on her behalf?

The illusion people are clinging to (like a life raft) is that when Cammarano left, the HCDO's corrupting influence left with him. And that's nonsense. When Zimmer got in hot water re those lottery tickets, who was at her side? An HCDO attorney. Who did the HCDO buy votes for in the 5th Ward race? Zimmer's 'reformer' buddy, Peter Cunningham.

Think the HCDO won't hand-pick the next 4th Ward Council rep? Think again. They control that vote - not Zimmer. They'll deliver it as they like - and Soares wants it. (Hence the Zoning Board appointment, to prove he can play nice in the HCDO sandbox.) Zimmer has no grass-roots base she can draw upon. (Even Mason can at least more or less depend on her own neighborhood to come through.) That means she's dependent on the machine to deliver her votes, and it's hard to be very 'independent' with that hanging over your head.

Right now, she's in a honeymoon period. This is her best chance to set the terms for her (inevitable & unavoidable) relationship with the HCDO, because right now they need her at least as much as she needs them. She's suddenly the one to beat in the race for mayor, and even the machine can't invent a palatable mayoral persona in the allotted time. (Though if Zimmer badly overplays her hand with them - well, there's always Marsh.) In the back of her mind she knows that she's surrounded by people who owe the County machine. In the long run, she knows she'll need them herself, unless she can somehow develop her own dependable core constituency. Which seems unlikely.

And this is how the HCDO has controlled Hoboken (with a few interruptions) through the years. For local pols, it's the convenience of easy campaign money - no humiliating, time-consuming begging for dollars! (But no asking where it came from, either.) It's knowing that many of the people you deal with (even/especially the 'reformers') owe them something. And then there's fear. Maybe your colleagues are reporting your 'private' conversations to the party bosses. Maybe they're planning to trade you in, the way they did with Bernie Kenny. (Some believe Kenny was roughed up by a mysterious speeding car, to get the point across. For his part, Kenny pretty much stopped fighting having the rug pulled out from under him after that hit-and-run.) With the HCDO, the knives are always out.

The only way to fight the HCDO's influence is to stay completely clear of them. Russo did it - he strongarmed them out of his way. Vezetti did it, because he just wouldn't stand for that type. He just wouldn't have them around him. Dawn Zimmer has been quoted saying, "I want to work with the HCDO". Substitute those last four letters for B-O-R-G and you'll understand the inherent nature of the problem. Unlike the Borg, resistance to the HCDO is not futile. But it's quite challenging, and few attempt it.

Dawn hasn't steered clear of HCDO entanglements, because she sees no need to. She thinks she can handle it. So has every 'reformer' who found his/herself in office, only to one day become the target for the next 'wave' of reform.

Russo, Hague, Roberts, Ramos - the list goes on and on - all entered office on 'reform' platforms, and wound up as part of the county machine. (Except for Russo, who created his own citywide machine. Boss Hague, who entered office as a fire-breathing 'reformer', ran the machine at his peak, as Boss Menendez does today.)

Zimmer's original 4th Ward campaign centered on a vow to fix the flooding that plagues the area. Her rabid boosters champion her as the answer to corruption, as well. But walk through her ward after a heavy rain. It's the same as it ever was. We'll soon be saying that about Hoboken's corruption issues, too.

Q&A: What happened in Hoboken, what happens next

Cammarrano won as expected, but it was damn close. What does it mean?

Q: Zimmer lost by fewer than 200 votes. How could that happen, when Mason's vote and Zimmer's vote made up a plurality?

A: Michael 'Fat Tony' Lenz and Tony 'The Joke' Soares have been running a protection racket for Hoboken's reformer-wannabes for years. In other words, if you have any kind of political footprint and want to run as a 'reform' candidate in Hoboken, you either go through them or they'll scuttle your campaign. No need to take our word for it, just ask Scott Delea or Beth Mason for their experiences in that regard.

So when it came time for the runoff, Mason threw in her lot with Zimmer (aka Soares/Lenz), but it was understandably less than wholehearted. That's not Mason's fault - it's the Zimmer campaign's responsibility to collect those votes. If they didn't make Mason happy, that's their failing.

There are so MANY ways Lenz and Soares screwed the pooch, that it's impossible to list them all. But here are a few:

1) Failing to get their handpuppet, Marsh, to make nice with Mason. We last saw Marsh running on a nightmare (losing) HCDO ticket with party hack Sal Vega, in one of the nastiest campaigns ever. This was at the behest of her guru Lenz. Lenz SHOULD have instructed Marsh to smooth things over and work with Beth, setting her a place at the table. But the cardinal rule with Soares and Lenz is that their glorification is always more important than winning a campaign. So it's no surprise they favored their usual clumsy, heavyhanded tactics here.

Number of votes lost: We'll be super-conservative with these numbers and assume that many Mason supporters held their noses and voted for Zimmer. But it's clear that not ALL of them did. Let's say, just 75 votes of Mason's 2500 or so went down the drain here.

2) Losing Inez Garcia-Keim. This happened during the freeholder elevction, when party functionary Lenz (along with the other 'reformers' in that camp), turned their backs on a woman they knew to be honest, so that the HCDO candidate would have a clear field.

As usual, Lenz and the self-proclaimed 'reform' thugs did nothing to make this right. Keim has lived in Hoboken a LONG time, and is well-known among oldtimers. They did her so wrong that she didn't just abstain from endorsing 'reformer' ZImmer - she went clear over to the other side. This reinforces point #1, above, re the loss of Mason votes, as Keim was well within the Mason camp. Let's say 10 votes were lost here.

3) Pissing off Hoboken411. Whatever you think of manchild Perry Klaussen, he runs arguably the biggest news outlet in town. How brilliant of loserboys Lenz and Soares to tick the guy off SO badly that not only did he loudly ban them from his site, he also very conspicuously pulled his former support of ZImmer.

Since that wasn't quite enough damage for them, these brilliant political operatives hit the 'net (under various names) and rumor mill to slander Klaussen. Natch this attempt inspired subsequent bad publicity for Zimmer at 411 - not just as a matter of salving wounded pride, but also as a serious matter of self-preservation on Klaussen's part.

Brilliant, boyos: Alienating the media is EXACTLY what you wanna do to help your candidate. Even readers not particularly sympathetic to the greasy Klaussen (a majority of Hoboken, apparently) were moved to sympathy for the position in which he had been placed. Votes lost: Probably closer to a thousand, but again we'll be super-conservative and say 100.

And that's the difference in the election tally, right there. A couple hundred votes, lost for no good reason. All because of the sort of stunts Soares and Lenz have pulled before and will do over and over and over again as they can find another patsy stupid and/or lazy enough to empower them. Reform's not the issue to them. Neither are the best long-term interests of Hoboken. All that matters is that they appear, to SOMEbody, to be important and powerful, right now.

We knew they would. That's why we predicted a Cammarrano win. Not because he was the people's choice - clearly, he was not. But we knew the losers would find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, once again. THAT is something we weren't about to bet against, not on your life.

Q. What does the close vote, and Cammarrano's lack of coattails, mean?

A. It suggests Cammarano (i.e., the HCDO) rigged votes at the polls, for one thing. To be specific: Cammarrano's backers rigged more voting machine votes (as opposed to paper votes) than Zimmer's insurgent HCDO backers could.

When you send in homeless people to stand in for registered voters, you don't strain their brain pan with a whole slate of names. You give them one name - the lead candidate. Paper ballots are a different story: Someone fills them out for someone else to sign, or you fake a signature. Either way, no memorization required.

That's why Cammarrano's paper ballots supported a whole slate, but at the polls it was a different story.

But the gap between Cammarrano and his slate also tells us that many Mason voters simply would not pull the trigger for Zimmer. We covered this in the previous question.

Finally, the vote tells us that mainline HCDO pols are in rough shape, despite their ability to get Healy re-elected in Jersey City. Healy waltzed in largely because of the lackluster campaigns waged against him. Not that ANY of the mayoral campaigns waged in Hoboken were anything to be proud of, but in JC even calling them 'token' is too kind. Anyway, the bottom line is that Corzine is going to have problems in November.

Q. But doesn't Zimmer more or less control the council now? Her slate won!

A. You'll have to wait a minute while we finish laughing.

OK, that's better. No - wait. OK, let's go.

First: Zimmer couldn't even control 'her' ward's vote - it went to the other guy. As we've said before, she NEVER won her ward. The HCDO swooped in and handed it to her when Campos went off their reservation. Since the HCDO mainstream wanted Cammarrano, and not Zimmer, for mayor, they simply handed those votes to him this election. That's why ZImmer's no 'reformer', she's just just an HCDO rent-a-Councilperson du jour. Her usefulness to them is that she can split the 'reform' vote and render it harmless. (At least for the time being.)

Second: As noted earlier, those votes for Zimmer's slate were actually an ANTI-Zimmer vote. Many of those votes came from Mason voters who couldn't stand the people around Zimmer and didn't like the way Mason was treated by Marsh and others. NEITHER ZImmer nor Cammarrano has 'coattails'. Cammarrano doesn't have 'em because no one on his slate made it. Zimmer doesn't have 'em because, in order to have coattails you have to ....wait for it.... ACTUALLY GET ELECTED! (duh)

Third: Council members traditionally swing their support to whomever they figure will get them re-upped. That's why, for example, DelBoccio and Cricco had no problems when Russo fell from power. They just ran on the HCDO's (Roberts) slate. The question is, who will the new Councilmembers run with come re-election time? Well, think about it. Right now, Cammarrano's got nothin'. He's going to be wooing the Council from Day One to ride his train. Zimmer, and probably Mason, will be doing the same thing. Since Cammarrano is now the guy with the keys to the HCDO's car, he's going to have an edge in wooing support from the Council. By contrast, what can Mason or Zimmer actually deliver? Yes, Zimmer will remind them 'you won on my slate', but that will only stretch so far.

So: Not only does Zimmer NOT control the new councilmembers - the new councilmembers, effectively, control HER. They are very much in the driver's seat, and she has nothing - NOTHING - to keep them in line.

Zimmer doesn't control the Council - that's a bad joke. Ultimately, the state controls the council... at least as far as the bottom line goes. Zimmer controls her newly-elected slate to about the same degree that she controls the flooding in her ward.

According to her various statements, Zimmer does not control where her money comes from, nor does she control the actions of people ostensibly working for her. We really don't know if Zimmer has any control of ANYthing.

Q. But Cammarrano IS a weak mayor, right? Doesn't that mean he can be kept in check - that he can't do too much harm?

A. Roberts was the weakest mayor Hoboken has seen in a while. Yet he managed to leave Hoboken in pretty bad shape. We're pretty confident the SS Hoboken has yet to hit bottom. Why, you can still hear the orchestra playing on deck!

It's OVAH!

The election's well over a week away, and 'Zip' Zimmer's already lost. All that's left to do is watch the rats jumping ship.

Over at Hoboken411, perpetual front-runner Perry Klaussen has distanced himself from Zimmer, who he supported (to the point of libeling her opponent) in the past. His excuse is that 'her people have acted unprofessionally' towards him. Of course, such a remark is meaningless from someone as self-indulgent as the smarmy Klaussen, who makes up the rules as he goes along. In Klaussenese, he means his butt wasn't kissed sufficiently by the Zimmerites. Since 411 is the only thing Klaussen has in his life, he's going to milk these fleeting moments for all they're worth.

The real bottom line is that Klaussen just didn't want to be seen backing a loser. After bashing Cammarrano from Day One, he's suddenly 'neutral' (neutered?) in this election. That's just the way you roll when you pretend to have principles, but your real goal is popularity. Speaking of which, let's consider Soares and Lenz.

Soares and Lenz, like Klaussen, are deathly allergic to floundering political campaigns. You gotta feel some sympathy for that, since most of the campaigns they've been involved with in their lives HAVE floundered, precisely because they've been attached to them. It's the ultimate Catch-22.

Since we've been involved in past campaigns with those two (the only ones they ever won, in fact), we've seen their behavior when things get iffy. They go into full-blown scapegoat mode. That's demoralizing enough when you win, but when the water's rising all around you it's cancerous. We can only imagine the petty bickering and fingerpointing going on, even now, among the Zimmerites. Soares will scream, loudly for all to hear, that the campaign is lost because he was not listened to. (He does it every campaign.) Lenz will likewise blame whoever is above him in the food chain, hoping all the while someone from the Cammarrano camp will throw him a bone. (But no one will. They hate him over there, much more even than the odious Soares.)

The HCDO's plan worked perfectly. They got rid of Mason, the only candidate who was actually likely to ask embarrassing questions and maybe screw up a few of their favorite honeypots. It was a simple task to split the fickle, vain and self-referential 'reformer' vote and skew it toward Zimmer. With Mason out of the way, it's now easy enough to pull the rug out from under the clueless Zimmer, whose existence as a councilperson is due entirely to HCDO support (mainly by way of the somewhat resurgent Amato gang). A few HCDO mavericks looking for an edge are indeed supporting Zimmer, in hopes she can pull her chestnuts out of the fire. It's a risk/reward sort of thing, like JC Mayor Healey's support of Obama when everyone else lined up neatly behind Billary. Obama won, Healey lucked out. But they still have to keep a low profile, so as not to antagonize the real powers (Menendez, etc.). Cammarrano's in, and Dawn Zimmer and Peter "I'm My Own Man, As Long As They Let Me" Cunningham get a sharp lesson in who's boss. (Hint: Not them, and not the voters, either.) Like Soares, Marsh, and Lenz, they'll call themselves 'reformers' as long as the can find someone to buy into it. (I.e., someone who just moved into town. Maybe.) It's the great circle of life in Hudson County politics, where 'reform' is nothing more than a ruse to gain control of the machine.

Life in Hoboken continues to head back, back, back to the 1970's. High interest rates, plummeting property values, rampant and unrepentant official theft. When the town truly hits bottom, buy a condo. Assuming, that is, you can stand to live in a place that will be universally labeled "SO OVAH". Just like this election.

Who will win the Hoboken runoff?

A mind-numbingly simple guide.

Q) Will Lenz and Soares be in charge of Zimmer's campaign message?

A) It's unlikely, given their rep. But if so - can you say "Mayor Cammarrano"?

Q) Will Lenz and Soares be prominent in Zimmer's campaign?

A) If so, forget about any support from Beth Mason. Here's the formula: Her support of Zimmer will be in inverse ratio to theirs.

Q) Does machine politics still run Hoboken, despite its standing on the brink of disaster?

A) Of COURSE it does! Therefore, the most machine-like candidate has a distinct advantage. That's Cammarano. But Zimmer has her own HCDO ties, which Lenz and Soares (remember when they used to cite the evils of HCDO connections? ah, but that was before they knew the power of the dark side) used to endlessly flog as evidence of a sellout.

Definition of a sellout: Someone who cashes in the way you wish you could.

Q) WIth Mason as good as finished in Hudson County politics, will anyone ever look into the finances of Hoboken's hospital?

A) This has nothing at all to do with the runoff. But the answer is: Not until after it collapses, money gone, records destroyed. Neither remaining candidate would dare turn over those rocks. Whazzamatter, don't you WANT your money stolen?

Q) Never mind all that - who the hell wins?

A) Cammarano, of course. The people's choice.

••••••••••••••••••••••

The HCDO has already won this election, regardless of what happens in June. The people of Hoboken have chosen to re-elect the group that brought them the state takeover. They have changed clothes, lost weight, and shined their shoes, but it's the same game, different dealer.

And back to the Seventies we go. High interest rates, joblessness, urban flight to the suburbs, and cheap Hoboken real estate. Like that last part, do ya? Ah - but it was cheap for good reason. Enjoy.

The Emperor's New Clubs

Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worries in life were to dress in elegant clothes, and own the most wonderful set of golf clubs in the world...

      Word of the Emperor’s refinement and willingness to disparage his own country for a soundbyte spread to Europe and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor’s vanity decided to take advantage of it. They lobbied the halls of Congress with a scheme in mind.

      "We are two very good golf pros and after many years of research we have created an extraordinary set of clubs so divine that they appear invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate their quality."

      Nancy Pelosi heard the scoundrels’ strange story and sent for Harry Reid. Reid notified the Rahm Emanuel, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor’s curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.

      "Besides being invisible, your Oneness, these clubs will be created especially for you." The Emperor gave the two men a bag of bailout money in exchange for their promise to begin working on the clubs immediately.

      "Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for an unused Chrysler plant and some more bailout money, and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent the taxpayers’ money quite well: in addition to getting a new, extraordinary set of clubs, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, Barney Frank, who was considered by his peers as a man with common sense.

      "Go and see how the work is proceeding," the One told him, "and come back to let me know."

      Frank was welcomed by the two scoundrels.

      "We're almost finished, but we need more bailout money. Here, Excellency! Admire the workmanship, feel the quality!" The old man bent over the assembly area and tried to see the clubs that were not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.

      "I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If Barney Frank admitted that he didn't see anything, he could be discharged from his office and be forced to look for a private sector job!

      "What a marvelous set of clubs!” he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More bailout money was requested to finish the work.

      Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two golf pros had come to deliver his new clubs.

      "Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding the bag of clubs.

      "Here it is your Oneness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most wonderful golf clubs in the world are ready for you. Look at the Corinthian Leather grip and feel how rich it is." Of course the Emperor did not feel any grip and could see neither woods nor putters. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily Nancy Pelosi was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the clubs, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent, except a few bloggers who nobody ever read anyway. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.

      The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. With great ceremony, they pretended to hand him one of the clubs.

      "Your Oneness, you'll want to take a practice swing.” The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved. He proceeded to swing his arms back and forth, recalling Ralph Kramden learning to golf from Norton in that Honeymooners episode.

      "Yes, this is a beautiful club and it feels very good in my hands," the Emperor said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."

      "Your Oneness," the Rahm Emanuel said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary set of clubs and they are anxious to see you try them out." The Emperor was doubtful showing his 50 handicap to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, his magnificent clubs would far overshadow his poor golf game.

      "All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his enourage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.

      The leftleaning pundits said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clubs. They're almost as beautiful as he himself!"

      "And the grip! Such a grip! It is not unlike the grip he has on all our hearts and minds!"

With great fanfare, the two golf pros placed a tee in the ground upon which they placed an invisible ball. The Emperor swung, and all gasped at the stupendous flight of the ball.

“Look at it rise! Just like the stock market! Surely this is the beginning of a golden age!”

They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see either the clubs, or the ball, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.

      A child, however, who had no government contracts and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the designated media area.

      "The Emperor has no clubs," he said.

      "Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

      "The boy is right! The Emperor has no clubs! It's true! Plus, we now think the market will crash again in the fall!"

      The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He thought it better to continue the photo op under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clubs was either stupid or incompetent. And he smiled stiffly for the media, while behind him a page held an imaginary stress test.

Cruelest Christmas message ever uttered

Don't let your kids see this.

Sorry. But we thought you'd want to know.

Get ready for Black Friday

The day after Thanksgiving, retailers discount products to kick off the Christmas shopping season...

The Black Friday site will alert you so these sales - and point you to online links that will allow you to take advantage of sales online - so you WON'T spend your time waiting on lines.

Wrong AGAIN on global warming

Proving again that Nobel prizes are given BY idiots, TO idiots.

Or, perhaps WORSE than idiots. Incompetents? Habitual liars?

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Except that - er - it WASN'T:

Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

The anomaly was the result of a GISS data error. So - did they correct it? Yeah, kinda:

GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year. ...last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

This is what happens when you're more invested in PC ideology and politics instead of - oh, we don't know... actual science?

Corzine gets 'F' for fiscal policy

Considering his abysmal performance in office, you wouldn't think Corzine... had ANY background in running a private business. But then again, considering the performance of companies such as Lehman lately, running a Goldman Sachs appears to be proof of nothing beyond the ability to manipulate markets to a few players' advantage. As Warren Buffet colorfully noted: 'When the tide goes out, you get to see who's wearing a bathing suit'.

That said, get the links to the unflattering portrayal of Corzine's disastrous fiscal policies here. Corzine was one of eight governors getting an 'F'. If you missed it, his latest bright idea is to have the government buy houses whose owners are failing - as if that would solve anything.

Really, Corzine's just running out the clock, hoping that Obama will gain office and get him the hell out of Dodge before Jersey's inevitable fiscal collapse.

Howard Stern asks voters about their support for Obama

Hilarious and brilliant, though completely unsurprising. (audio)

What this points to, actually, is the real way people make decisions. It has little to do with independent analysis (especially in urban areas) and everything to do with tribal identification.

Stern, God bless him, IS an independent mind. He may speak to the lowest common denominator, but he sure doesn't follow the crowd. That's how he got to where he is today, by following his own muse wherever it took him. All things considered, this is a pretty courageous piece, but then Stern's never been afraid of controversy, either.