Corzine cribbing from GOP’s playbook

Bill's Comment: The current senior United States Senator from New Jersey, Jon Corzine, is BANKRUPT on idea initiation, as he makes his bid for the Office Of The Governor. Then again, so are most of the members of the Democratic Party.
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Corzine cribbing from GOP’s playbook

Column by Charles Webster
2/20/05

U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine wants to be the governor and he is willing to steal from the Republicans to give himself a leg up on the competition.

Corzine says he wants to clean up New Jersey politics and he insists he is the only man that can deliver.

To prove his point he is calling for the creation of a state comptroller to aid in "promoting efficiency, reducing waste, and detecting and preventing misconduct."

Corzine wants a comptroller who will "conduct regular audits and performance reviews of all state departments and agencies, independent authorities, county and municipal governments, and school boards. The comptroller will also have oversight over all state contracts exceeding $1 million to ask tough questions before money is spent."

On top of the comptroller idea, Corzine apparently has had an epiphany -- he wants a pay-to-play ban.

Wow! After reading that it is difficult to understand how Corzine plans to put a stop to all the thievery going on under the gold dome of the State House, and it’s even harder to find evidence that Corzine is the guy to do it.

Ol’ Jonnie is shopping a plan to put a stop to influence peddling, contract swaps for campaign donations and other assorted schemes better known as pay-to-play.

That’s what voters in the Garden State want, but they have been looking for it to happen for a long while now.

The big news is that Corzine’s ideas are nothing new. In fact, Corzine’s ideas are ripped right out of the Republicans’ playbook.

You got it! Corzine stole GOP ideas and is now shopping them around as his own.

Call it stealing, call it plagiarism, call knowing a good idea when he sees one, but don’t forget to call it exactly what it is -- and that’s downright dishonest.

Republican lawmakers Rick Merkt and Michael Patrick Carroll already have a bill introduced to create a new elected office of state comptroller. If Corzine is sincere about wanting to see that post created he needs to get Assembly Speaker Albio Sires and Assembly Majority Leader Joe Roberts off their collective duffs and tell them to post the bill for a vote.

By the way, Jon, If you can’t find the bill on that long list of "ideas," reference it as ACR 55.

And as for that pay-to-play ban you say you want to see in place, well, same thing applies here. There are already bills introduced in the Legislature to get the dirty deed banned, but they’re collecting dust over in the Democrats’ Twilight Zone.

Bill Baroni, Kevin O’Toole and Tom Kean, Jr. all have bills pending that will stop pay-to-play dead in its tracks. But good old boys Sires and Roberts keep moving the bills to the bottom of the pile.

You want to be the Democrats’ leader in New Jersey? Well, get those guys in line first, everything else will fall into place.

So Jon, it’s nice to see you’re finally playing the ethics reform card.

But I’m sorry to inform you that you’re a little late in the game. Eight million dollars in donations from you and Mommy over the last five years does buy you a bye. If you want to be governor, you’ll have to come up with a sharper game plan.

In the meantime, the Republicans are waiting to see their bills passed. All you have to do is make the call.

-- Charles Webster is the State House reporter and political columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at cwebster4@trentonian.com.



©The Trentonian 2005