Dvd Avins ([info]barking_iguana) wrote,
@ 2008-04-14 21:08:00
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Why I vote Republican for county offices
Bossism. Right now, Middlesex isn't quite as bad as Bergen, where this example is from, but the general model is the same.

http://bluejersey.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=7495

That's a pro-Ferriero (the Bergen County Democratic Chair and boss) municipal clerk dealing (or not dealing) with someone filing for a County Committee slot on the reform slate.

Typically, even pro-machine clerks have played things at least a little more by the book for the past 35 years. They still want to act the way this miscreant did, but since the civil rights movement focused attention on such abuses of the process, they've generally found it not worth the bad publicity.

But the corruption remains. And the immense amount of money siphoned from the system makes it impossible for the state to implement a progressive agenda at a reasonable price.

At the state level, there are enough ideologically informed policy decisions that I vote Democratic for state legislature, even if it means voting for the same crooks I voted against when they were Freeholders. What's more, I've generally been spared having the most egregious hacks run for legislature from my county-straddling legislative district.

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[info]chemoelectric
2008-04-15 01:35 am UTC (link)
Yeah, Kristy comes back home from one of her trips to get business done for her mother and she tells all the Minnesotans how in NJ you have to go GOP to get anything done there. It isn’t like that here, and our ‘Republicans’ are very bad.

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Republicans are evil
[info]stormlorde
2008-04-15 04:19 pm UTC (link)
If you cannot in good conscience vote democrat, at least vote for a non-spawn of Satan. (You can always write in Scooby Doo!)

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Re: Republicans are evil
[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-15 05:06 pm UTC (link)
Having a watchdog Republican on our all-Democratic Board of Freeholders would be worth putting up with thier different brand of evil. That's not happening for now, and all I'm doing is keeping the corrupt Democrats' margins down.

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-16 12:27 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately, what's running against the machine isn't any better. Our local "reform" slate includes some of the most despicable people I've ever met who dare to call themselves Democrats.

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[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-16 01:30 am UTC (link)
My impression of the State Senator herself, albeit from 60 miles away, is quite positive. And I worked with some of the folks who despised the County Chair two years ago, and had generally favorable impressions of them, as well. Has they just been unable to recruit enough good people in your town, or have I missed something critical about the character of the State Senator or the rest of the group that opposes the Chair?

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-16 02:35 am UTC (link)
I only know the candidates from my corner of town, all of whom are intent on accumulating power in their own hands, but seem to be lauded by BlueJersey as crusaders for justice from what I could tell. I don't know the State Senator herself personally, but I do know some of the other players, and let's just say that I can't see BG without wanting to spit on him.

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[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-16 02:43 am UTC (link)
Could you send me an email saying who BG is?

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[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-16 03:04 am UTC (link)
Ah, the Google force is with me, and I figured it out. So far, from what I see on Blue Jersey, it seems to be the median opinion that he's on the right side but has significant personality issues.

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-17 02:09 am UTC (link)
He's not on the right side any more than any other petty power-hungry wannabe is. He's the kind of "liberal" who makes the Radical Right's "Liberals" look plausible. Rules, you understand, are only for the little people, unless he's consciously in the public eye. He's scum.

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[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-17 03:49 am UTC (link)
I'll buy that as a description of *him*. But there is still, near as I can tell, one side that is much better than the other at the county level. He's about the worst on one side, and would be rather typical on the other. If he's trying to take over your town's party and the county boss's allies are actually better in your town, then vote for the machine. But I suspect there will be a real difference in the level of corruption county-wide depending on which side wins over the next few years, and your local asshole has happened to find it to his advantage to ally with the better side.

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-18 12:59 am UTC (link)
When I don't know the players personally, I prefer the current NY method of rooting out corruption to trying to sort out who's on the "right side" based on the words of those trying to get into or hold onto power. I'll take independent investigations with actual evidence over the pigs from Animal Farm any day.

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[info]barking_iguana
2008-04-18 02:43 am UTC (link)
What I do know, from a distance, is that Ferriero is both bad and powerful (which is worse than bad and no consolidated power) and Weinberg at least used to be quite good, 15 years ago. And other people I pretty much trust think Wienberg is still pretty good now, but more of a power player than she used to be.

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-19 05:07 pm UTC (link)
The pigs from Animal Farm were pretty good before they got power, too. What the "reform" candidates have been advocating in my town is not reform so much as usurpation, and their principal technique is demagoguery.

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[info]tayefeth
2008-04-16 12:46 am UTC (link)
I searched BlueJersey for the name of one of the scum who claims to be a "reform" Democrat from my area. They had nothing but praise for a man who thinks nothing of slandering his opponents, claiming that any criticism of his proposals is an ad hominem attack, and lying to the press. (I don't buy that a man who can march in a Memorial Day Parade without his respirator and spend all of his time talking about how awful the town is was really so damaged by the air after 9/11 that he can't work as a lawyer.) I'm less than impressed.

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