Monthly Archives: October 2015

Elections, Law and Politics

#13: Governor Chris Christie’s Debate Jab

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #13, on the subject of Governor Chris Christie’s Debate Jab.

I do not presently have television access (if you want to help fix that, start with the Patreon campaign, whose first priorities are to keep this website hosted, pay for my Internet access, and otherwise keep me online, but beyond that will hopefully cover things like new movies and television access).  I did not see the third Republican debate–but I have made a point of reading quite a bit about it from several sides.  One moment that stands out in the coverage comes from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and I consider it worth covering here in part because I was, after all, assigned to a New Jersey political news beat, but also because I think it has ramifications for the national election.  The moment was mentioned in several articles, but the best report of it that I saw came from Yahoo! Politics reporter Michael Walsh, who in a collection of six Best one-liners of the third GOP presidential debate listed it second.  To lay the foundation, let me quote a large part of his article:

Debate moderator John Harwood asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie what we should do to deal with anthropogenic climate change.

Christie’s response began with a criticism of what he sees as the proposed solution from Democrats–namely more taxes and government involvement–to which Harwood reiterated his question.

Christie continued his answer by saying that “we” should invest in all types of energy.  Again, before Christie finished speaking, Harwood asked another question:  “You mean government?”

“No, John.  John, do you want me to answer or do you want to answer?”  Christie said to laughter.  “How are we going to do this?  Because, I’ve got to tell you the truth–even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude.”

After that rejoinder, Christie proceeded to outline his energy plan, uninterrupted, of working with the private sector to make solar and wind energy affordable for businesses and individuals–repeating that government intervention and more taxes are not the answer.

(The article is worth reading in its entirety.  The other moments were from Donald Trump reacting to John Kasich, Marco Rubio responding to Jeb Bush’s attack on him, Mike Huckabee refusing to attack Donald Trump, Ted Cruz complaining about differences in media handling between the Democratic and Republican debates, and Carly Fiorina on being accused of not having smiled enough in the previous debate.)

Although it is much too early in the process to exclude the possibility of anyone becoming the next President, let alone the next Republican nominee (the reason George Pataki has not withdrawn), Christie is certainly a dark horse in this race, a long shot (the British PaddyPower Sport betting site as of October 29 lists him at 20/1 to be the Republican nominee, six candidates with better odds led by Marco Rubio at 11/8 and Donald Trump at 4/1; he lists as in a four-way tie for eighth with 40/1 to be President, with Hillary Clinton at 5/6 and Marco Rubio at 4/1 leading the pack).  He is probably not going to be the next President of the United States.

img0013Debate

However, he might be the next Vice President.

The position of Vice President on the ticket is an interesting one.  Voters are not voting for you, and you are not really asking them to vote for you.  They will ask themselves the question of whether they would trust you to run the country should, God forbid, something happen to the President–the reason Thomas Eagleton’s mental health record was a disaster for the George McGovern candidacy in 1972–but Christie has run a state, and done that well enough that he was endorsed for re-election by many of the state’s Democratic elected officials.  What would keep a man from being President (such as possibly the “Bridgegate” scandal) is ignored when you are running for the second seat–witness current Vice President Joe Biden, who was knocked out of the Democratic Presidential primary race in 1988 on allegations of plagiarism (both in his speeches and in his Law School essays) but who was not considered a liability as Obama’s running mate.  It was even joked in the early days of Obama’s presidency that Biden was his insurance policy–no one would assassinate the President because that would make him responsible for advancing “Smokin’ Joe” to Commander in Chief.  Beyond the simple question of whether the Vice President could do the job if it became necessary, no one considers his qualifications and few consider his politics.

What does matter in a Vice Presidential running mate is what we might call his “attack chops”.  Presidential candidates, and to some degree Presidents, have the problem of needing to look strong without looking nasty.  Vice Presidential candidates, and Vice Presidents, are thus called upon to be the vocal defenders of the ticket, the one who will tackle opponents directly.  We excuse the second man on the ticket, because we are not voting for him, and that gives him a lot of freedom to speak his mind and defend the ticket, to say things that the Presidential candidate (or the President) could not say without staining his own reputation and losing “political capital”.  We dislike Presidents who have a nasty bark, but the same trait in a Vice President is seen as protective, because he is not defending himself but his President.

Christie has once again proved that he has that bark.  He has the necessary aggressiveness to be the Vice President and the Vice Presidential candidate.

He is also viewed as more moderate–a Republican governor who managed to make progress in what is regarded a Democratic state with Democratically-controlled legislative houses, because he was able to compromise and work across the aisle.  Conservatives are going to regard him a RINO, but he is going to appeal to the independent middle.

I can see a number of possible scenarios in which some other candidate might be a better choice.

  • If Trump wins, he would do better with Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio in the second seat.  That’s partly because a Trump ticket probably needs a stabilizing “insider” anchor, someone who is viewed as understanding politics.  It’s also because Trump is already closely tied to New Jersey.  As I understand it, Trump is officially a New Yorker–and that matters, because the Constitution specifies that the candidates for President and Vice President must come from different states–but even so, the connection of Trump to Atlantic City suggests that the ticket would need to spread its appeal by choosing someone not from the northeast corridor.  A Bush/Rubio (or Rubio/Bush) ticket would suffer from similar problems.
  • There is a viable argument to the effect that any white male political insider who became the nominee ought to choose a running mate that was not a white male political insider–thus Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson rise to the top of the list as good Vice Presidential options.  They have neither the political experience nor the obvious fighter instincts of Christie, but they have an appeal to voters who are otherwise considered strong Democratic demographics.  Marco Rubio would be a good compromise here, Bobby Jindal or Ted Cruz less so.  Of course, the Vice Presidential candidate does not have to be chosen from among the Presidential hopefuls, but there is some sense in choosing someone who has already become a recognized figure in the race.
  • If the nominee is seen as more moderate, the party might be best served by having a more conservative running mate to appeal to its conservative wing.  Most of the “establishment” candidates in the race are more conservative, and this is rather unlikely overall.

However, if the nomination goes to Carson, Fiorina, or Rubio, or maybe Bush, Christie has been positioned as the ideal running mate.  He might well become the next Vice President of the United States.

In addition to blog posts in the Politics and Elections categories, the reader is referred to previous articles, the several linked within the blog post plus The Early 2016 Presidential Race, The Republican Dilemma, and other articles in the Law and Politics section of the main site.

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Elections, Law and Politics

#12: The 2015 Election

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #11, on the subject of The 2015 Election.

I last wrote suggesting that it was in everyone’s best interest in terms of future national elections to vote in present local elections, and said that I would try to produce something helpful in that regard.  This is that.

I suppose the place to start is to suggest that most of my readers need to look elsewhere for help.  I cannot adequately cover even New Jersey, given all its municipalities.  I can point you to Ballotpedia as perhaps the most unbiased source of information on most of these issues; you can also get some information from U. S. Politics My Time to Vote (links to individual states are at the bottom of the main page) and Rock the Vote, although this site is more geared toward getting younger voters active in the process and its election information is mostly given as links to official web sites.  Ultimately those official web sites are the place to get the most accurate, if not the most easily accessed, information, and most states have online copies of sample ballots available so you can see the choices before you reach the booth.

The big elections this year are state legislatures.  Louisiana and Mississippi both have all seats in both houses up for re-election, but Republican control is not thought to be challenged.  Virginia is different.  Although both houses are controlled by Republicans and all seats are up for re-election, the governorship recently shifted to Democratic control, and the Senate is closely balanced twenty-one-to-nineteen.  If the Democrats can unseat one Republican they will create a twenty-to-twenty balance and the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, serving as Senate President (much as the Vice President of the United States does in the United States Senate), would cast the tiebreaking vote giving Democrats a slim majority.  Complicating it further, though, there is an independent running against one of the incumbent Democrats with a strong chance of unseating her, which could prevent the Democrats from having a controlling majority.

Which brings us to New Jersey.  Our State Senators serve four year terms, and this is not the election year for them; however, all of our eighty State Assembly seats are up for re-election every odd-numbered year.  We have forty legislative districts, each of which elects two Assemblymen.  Presently forty-seven of those seats are held by Democrats, thirty-one by Republicans, and two are vacant.

img0012Districts

I am going to attempt to identify all forty districts, the incumbents, and the challengers in each.  I will also link to the best information I could find on each of the candidates.  Preference is given to a web site operated by the candidate, or a candidate Facebook page, with the last choice being the Ballotpedia reference page for the candidate.

District 1, all of Cape May and parts of Cumberland and Atlantic counties, including Avalon, Cape May, Cape May Point, Commercial, Corbin City, Dennis, Downe, Estell Manor, Fairfield (Cumberland), Greenwich (Cumberland), Hopewell (Cumberland), Lawrence (Cumberland), Lower, Maurice River, Middle, Millville, North Wildwood, Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Shiloh, Stone Harbor, Stow Creek, Upper, Vineland, West Cape May, West Wildwood, Weymouth, Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, Woodbine.  Incumbents are Democrat Bob Andrzejczak and Republican Samuel Fiocchi; challengers are Democrat R. Bruce Land and Republican Jim Sauro.

District 2, the rest of Atlantic County (not covered in District 1), including Absecon, Atlantic City, Brigantine, Buena, Buena Vista, Egg Harbor City, Egg Harbor Township, Folsom, Hamilton (Atlantic), Linwood, Longport, Margate City, Mullica, Northfield, Pleasantville, Somers Point, Ventnor City.  Incumbents are Democrat Vincent Mazzeo and Republican Chris Brown; challengers are Democrat Colin Bell and Republican Will Pauls.

District 3, the rest of Cumberland (not covered in District 1), all of Salem, and part of Gloucester Counties, including Alloway, Bridgeton, Carneys Point, Clayton, Deerfield, East Greenwich, Elk, Elmer, Elsinboro, Franklin (Gloucester), Glassboro, Greenwich (Gloucester), Logan, Lower Alloways Creek, Mannington, National Park, Newfield, Oldmans, Paulsboro, Penns Grove, Pennsville, Pilesgrove, Pittsgrove, Quinton, Salem, South Harrison, Swedesboro, Upper Deerfield, Upper Pittsgrove, West Deptford, Woodbury Heights, Woodstown, Woolwich.  Incumbents are Democrats John Burzichelli and Adam Taliaferro, challengers are Republican Samuel Maccarone, Republican Leroy Pierce, and Independent “People’s Voice” candidate John Kalnas.

District 4, western parts of Camden and Gloucester Counties, including Chesilhurst, Clementon, Gloucester Township, Laurel Springs, Lindenwold, Monroe (Gloucester), Pitman, Washington (Gloucester), Winslow.  Incumbents are Democrats Paul Moriarty and Gabriela Mosquera, challengers are Republicans Kevin Murphy and Jack Nicholson.

District 5, eastern parts of Camden and Gloucester Counties, including Audubon, Audubon Park, Barrington, Bellmawr, Brooklawn, Camden, Deptford, Gloucester City, Haddon Heights, Harrison (Gloucester), Lawnside, Magnolia, Mantua, Mount Ephraim, Runnemede, Wenonah, Westville, Woodbury, Woodlynne.  Demcratic incumbents Gilbert Wilson and Angel Fuentes are not running for re-election.  Hoping to replace them are challengers Democrat Patricia Egan Jones, Democrat Arthur Barclay, Republican Kevin Ehret, and Republican Keith Walker.

District 6, parts of northwestern Camden and southwestern Burlington Counties, including Berlin Township, Cherry Hill, Collingswood, Gibbsboro, Haddon, Haddonfield, Hi-Nella, Maple Shade, Merchantville, Oaklyn, Pennsauken, Somerdale, Stratford, Tavistock, Voorhees.  Incumbents are Democrats Louis Greenwald and Pamela Lampitt, challengers are Republican Holly Tate, Republican Claire Gustafson, Green party candidate James Bracciante, and Green party candidate Amanda Davis.

District 7, western Burlington County including Beverly, Bordentown, Bordentown Township, Burlington, Burlington Township, Cinnaminson, Delanco, Delran, Edgewater Park, Fieldsboro, Florence, Moorestown, Mount Laurel, Palmyra, Riverside, Riverton, Willingboro.  Incumbents are Democrats Herbert Conaway, Jr., M.D. and Troy Singleton, challengers are Republicans Bill Conley and Rob Prisco.

District 8, a large part of Burlington plus parts of Camden and Atlantic Counties including Berlin Borough, Eastampton, Evesham, Hainesport, Hammonton, Lumberton, Mansfield (Burlington), Medford, Medford Lakes, Mount Holly, Pemberton Borough, Pemberton Township, Pine Hill, Pine Valley, Shamong, Southampton, Springfield (Burlington), Waterford, Westampton, Woodland.  Republican incumbent Christopher Brown is not running for re-election, but incumbent Republican Maria Rodriguez-Gregg and newcomer Republican Joe Howarth are running unopposed.

District 9, part of Burlington and much of Atlantic and Ocean Counties including Barnegat, Barnegat Light, Bass River, Beach Haven, Beachwood, Berkeley, Eagleswood, Galloway, Harvey Cedars, Lacey, Little Egg Harbor, Long Beach, Ocean Gate, Ocean Township (Ocean), Pine Beach, Port Republic, Seaside Park, Ship Bottom, South Toms River, Stafford, Surf City, Tabernacle, Tuckerton, Washington (Burlington).  Incumbents are Republicans Brian Rumpf and DiAnne Gove, challengers are Democrats Frank Zimmer and John Bingham.

District 10, a slice of Ocean County including Bay Head, Brick, Island Heights, Lakehurst, Lavallette, Manchester, Mantoloking, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights, Toms River.  Incumbents are Republicans David Wolfe and Gregory P. McGuckin, challengers are Democrats Valter Must and Kimberley Casten.

District 11, central Monmouth County including Allenhurst, Asbury Park, Colts Neck, Deal, Eatontown, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Interlaken, Loch Arbour, Long Branch, Neptune, Neptune Township, Ocean Township (Monmouth), Red Bank, Shrewsbury Borough, Shrewsbury Township, Tinton Falls, West Long Branch.  Incumbents are Republicans Mary Pat Angelini and Caroline Casagrande, challengers are Democrats Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey.

District 12, the center of the state including parts of Burlington, Monmouth, Middlesex, and Ocean Counties, including Allentown, Chesterfield, Englishtown, Jackson, Manalapan, Matawan, Millstone (Monmouth), New Hanover, North Hanover, Old Bridge, Plumsted, Roosevelt, Upper Freehold, Wrightstown.  Incumbents are Republicans Ronald Dancer and Robert Clifton, challengers are Democrats Robert Kurzydlowski and David Merwin, and Green party candidate Stephen Zielinski.

District 13, New Jersey’s “shoulder”, the part of Monmouth County that includes Aberdeen, Atlantic Highlands, Fair Haven, Hazlet, Highlands, Holmdel, Keansburg, Keyport, Little Silver, Marlboro, Middletown, Monmouth Beach, Oceanport, Rumson, Sea Bright, Union Beach.  Incumbents are Republicans Amy Handlin and Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr., challengers are Democrats Jeanne Cullinane and Thomas Herman, and Independent Joshua Leinsdorf.

District 14, the base of New Jersey’s “throat” crossing parts of Mercer and Middlesex Counties including Cranbury, East Windsor, Hamilton (Mercer), Hightstown, Jamesburg, Monroe (Middlesex), Plainsboro, Robbinsville, Spotswood.  Incumbents are Democrats Wayne DeAngelo and Daniel Benson, challengers are Republicans David C. Jones and Philip Kaufman, and Green party candidates Steven Welzer and Joann Cousin.

District 15, parts of northwestern Mercer and southwestern Hunterdon Counties including East Amwell, Ewing, Hopewell Borough (Mercer), Hopewell Township (Mercer), Lambertville, Lawrence (Mercer), Pennington, Trenton, West Amwell, West Windsor.  Incumbents are Democrats Reed Gusciora and Elizabeth Maher Muoio, challengers are Republicans Peter Mendonez and Anthony Giordano.

District 16, parts of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, and Somerset Counties including Branchburg, Delaware, Flemington, Hillsborough, Manville, Millstone (Somerset), Montgomery, Princeton, Raritan (Hunterdon), Readington, Rocky Hill, Somerville, South Brunswick, Stockton.  Incumbents are Republicans Jack Ciatarelli and Donna Simon, challengers are Democrats Andrew Zwicker and Maureen Vella.

District 17, small parts of Middlesex and Somerset Counties including Franklin (Somerset), Milltown, New Brunswick, North Brunswick, Piscataway.  Incumbents are Democrats Joseph Egan and Joseph Danielsen, challengers are Republicans Robert Mettler and Brajesh Singh, and Green party candidate Molly O’Brien.

District 18, the center of Middlesex County, including East Brunswick, Edison, Helmetta, Highland Park, Metuchen, South Plainfield, South River.  Incumbents are Democrats Nancy Pinkin and Patrick J. Diegnan, Jr., challengers are Republicans Synnove Bakke and Teresa Rose Hutchinson.

District 19, eastern Middlesex County including Carteret, Perth Amboy, Sayreville, South Amboy, Woodbridge.  Incumbents are Democrats John Wisniewski and Craig Coughlin, challengers are Republicans Thomas E. Maras and Jesus Varela.

District 20, northeastern Union County including Elizabeth, Hillside, Roselle, Union (Union).  Incumbents are Democrats Annette Quijana and Jamel Holley, challengers are Republicans Stephen Kozlovich and Roger Stryeski.

District 21, parts of Morris, Somerset, and Union Counties including Berkeley Heights, Bernards, Chatham Borough, Cranford, Far Hills, Garwood, Kenilworth, Long Hill, Mountainside, New Providence, Roselle Park, Springfield (Union), Summit, Warren, Watchung, Westfield.  Incumbents are Republicans Jon Bramnick and Nancy Munoz, challengers are Democrats Jill Anne Lazare and David Barnette.

District 22, parts of Middlesex, Somerset, and Union Counties including Clark, Dunellen, Fanwood, Green Brook, Linden, Middlesex, North Plainfield, Plainfield, Rahway, Scotch Plains, Winfield.  Democratic incumbent Linda Stender is not running for re-election.  Incumbent Democrat Gerald Green faces a field of Democrat James J. Kennedy, and Republicans William Vastine and William Michelson.

District 23, a large western section of Hunterdon, Somerset, and Warren Counties including Alexandria, Alpha, Bedminster, Bethlehem, Bloomsbury, Bound Brook, Bridgewater, Califon, Clinton, Clinton Township, Franklin (Hunterdon), Franklin (Warren), Frenchtown, Glen Gardner, Greenwich (Warren), Hackettstown, Hampton (Hunterdon), Harmony, High Bridge, Holland, Kingwood, Lebanon Borough, Lebanon Township, Lopatcong, Mansfield (Warren), Milford, Peapack-Gladstone, Phillipsburg, Pohatcong, Raritan (Somerset), South Bound Brook, Tewksbury, Union (Hunterdon), Washington Borough (Warren), Washington Township (Warren).  Incumbents are Republicans John DiMaio and Erik Peterson, challengers are Democrats Marybeth Maciag and Maria Rodriguez.

District 24, the large northwest corner of the state with Sussex and portions of Morris and Warren Counties including Allamuchy, Andover Borough, Andover Township, Belvidere, Blairstown, Branchville, Byram, Frankford, Franklin (Sussex), Fredon, Frelinghuysen, Green, Hamburg, Hampton (Sussex), Hardwick, Hardyston, Hopatcong, Hope, Independence, Knowlton, Lafayette, Liberty, Montague, Mount Olive, Newton, Ogdensburg, Oxford, Sandyston, Sparta, Stanhope, Stillwater, Sussex, Vernon, Walpack, Wantage, White.  Republican incumbent Alison McHose is not running for re-election, so incumbent Republican Parker Space is running with Gail Phoebus against Democrats Michael Grace and Jacky Stapel and Green party candidate Kenneth Collins.

District 25, in the center of the northern half of the state consisting of parts of Morris and Somerset Counties including Bernardsville, Boonton, Boonton Township, Chester Borough, Chester Township, Denville, Dover, Mendham Borough, Mendham Township, Mine Hill, Morris, Morristown, Mount Arlington, Mountain Lakes, Netcong, Randolph, Rockaway Borough, Roxbury, Victory Gardens, Washington (Morris), Wharton.  Incumbents are Republicans Michael Carroll and Anthony Bucco, Jr., challengers are Democrats Richard Corcoran and Thomas Moran.

District 26, a thin arc of parts of Essex, Morris, and Passaic Counties including Butler, Fairfield (Essex), Jefferson, Kinnelon, Lincoln Park, Montville, Morris Plains, North Caldwell, Parsippany-Troy Hills, Rockaway Township, Verona, West Caldwell, West Milford.  Incumbents are Republicans Jay Webber and BettyLou DeCorce, challengers are Democrats Wayne Marek and Avery Hart.

District 27, parts of Essex and Morris Counties including Caldwell, Chatham Township, East Hanover, Essex Fells, Florham Park, Hanover, Harding, Livingston, Madison, Maplewood, Millburn, Roseland, South Orange, West Orange.  Incumbents are Democrats John McKeon and Mila Jasey, challengers are Republicans Tayfun Selen and Wonkyu “Qu” Rim, and Libertarians Damien Caillault and Jeff Hetrick.

District 28, a fragment of Essex County including Bloomfield, Glen Ridge, Irvington, Newark, Nutley.  Incumbents are Democrats Ralph Caputo and Cleopatra Tucker, challengers are Republicans Darnel Henry and David H. Pinckney.

District 29, two cities in Essex County, Belleville, Newark.  Incumbents are L. Grace Spencer and Eliana Pintor Marin, challengers are Republicans Nicholas Campione and Jeannette Veras, and Independent Pablo Olivera.

District 30, parts of Monmouth and Ocean Counties including Avon-by-the-Sea, Belmar, Bradley Beach, Brielle, Farmingdale, Howell, Lake Como, Lakewood, Manasquan, Point Pleasant, Sea Girt, Spring Lake, Spring Lake Heights, Wall.  Incumbents are Republicans Sean T. Kean and Dave Rible, challengers are Democrats Lorna Phillipson and James Keady, and Independent Hank Schroeder.

District 31, part of Hudson County, the cities Bayonne, Jersey City.  Incumbent Democrats Jason O’Donnell and Charles Mainor are not running for re-election.  The field includes Democrats Nicholas Chiaravalloti and Angela McKnight, Republicans Matthew Kopko and Herminio Mendoza, and Independents Tony Zanowic and Alejandro Rodriguez (apparently running together).

District 32, parts of Bergen and Hudson Counties including East Newark, Edgewater, Fairview, Guttenberg, Harrison (Hudson), Kearny, North Bergen, Secaucus, West New York.  Incumbents are Democrats Vincent Prieto and Angelica Jimenez, challengers are Republicans Lisamarie Tusa and Frank Miqueli.

District 33, a small part of Hudson County including Hoboken, Jersey City, Union City, Weehawken.  Democratic incumbent Carmelo Garcia is not running for re-election.  Incumbent Democrat Raj Mukherji enters a field against Democrat Annette Chaparro, and Republicans Garrett Simulcik, Jr. and Javier Sosa.

District 34, urban areas of Essex and Passaic Counties including Clifton, East Orange, Montclair, Orange.  Incumbents are Democrats Sheila Oliver and Thomas Giblin, challengers are Republican John Traier and Independent Clenard Childress.

District 35, parts of Bergen and Passaic Counties including Elmwood Park, Garfield, Haledon, North Haledon, Paterson, Prospect Park.  Incumbents are Democrats Shavonda Sumter and Benjie Wimberly, challengers are Republicans David Jimenez and Ilia Villanueva.

District 36, parts again of Bergen and Passaic Counties including Carlstadt, Cliffside Park, East Rutherford, Little Ferry, Lyndhurst, Moonachie, North Arlington, Passaic, Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park, Rutherford, South Hackensack, Teterboro, Wallington, Wood-Ridge.  Incumbents are Democrats Gary Schaer and Marlene Caride, challengers are Republicans Forrest Elliot, Jr. and James Lenoy, and Independent Jeff Boss, who is also running for several other offices including President of the United States in 2016.

District 37, the eastern edge of Bergen County including Alpine, Bogota, Cresskill, Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Fort Lee, Hackensack, Leonia, Northvale, Palisades Park, Rockleigh, Teaneck, Tenafly.  Incumbents are Democrats Gordon Johnson and Valerie Vainieri Huttle, challengers are Republicans Joseph Fiscella and Gino Tessaro.

District 38, parts again of Bergen and Passaic Counties including Bergenfield, Fair Lawn, Glen Rock, Hasbrouck Heights, Hawthorne, Lodi, Maywood, New Milford, Oradell, Paramus, River Edge, Rochelle Park, Saddle Brook.  Incumbents are Democrats Timothy Eustace and Joseph Lagana, challengers are Republicans Mark Dipisa and Anthony Cappola.

District 39, again parts of Bergen and Passaic Counties including Bloomingdale, Closter, Demarest, Dumont, Emerson, Harrington Park, Haworth, Hillsdale, Mahwah, Montvale, Norwood, Oakland, Old Tappan, Park Ridge, Ramsey, Ringwood, River Vale, Saddle River, Upper Saddle River, Wanaque, Washington (Bergen), Westwood, Woodcliff Lake.  Incumbents are Republicans Holly Schepisi and Roberth Auth, challengers are Democrats Jeffrey Goldsmith and John Derienzo.

District 40, parts of Bergen, Essex, Morris, and Passaic Counties including Allendale, Cedar Grove, Franklin Lakes, Ho-Ho-Kus, Little Falls, Midland Park, Pequannock, Pompton Lakes, Ridgewood, Riverdale, Totowa, Waldwick, Wayne, Woodland Park, Wyckoff.  Incumbents are Republicans David Russo and Scott Rumana, challengers are Democrats Paul Vagiano and Christine Ordway.

Local election information is much more difficult to obtain over the Internet, but for sample ballot information you should contact your county clerk or other election officials; they are conveniently all listed on the New Jersey Department of State Division of Elections web site.

I know that’s not a lot of help, but it’s the best I can offer to such a large task.  Become informed, and then vote.

Several of the candidates mentioned above have previously run for other offices and so are mentioned on other pages of this site, notably on New Jersey 2013 Special Senatorial Election, New Jersey 2014 Primary Election, and New Jersey 2014 General Election.

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Elections, Law and Politics

#11: Caring About Off-Year Elections

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #11, on the subject of Caring About Off-Year Elections.

I was musing on politics–and despite the preponderance of such posts in these early days of the blog, I am not really all that interested in politics, it just happened to become my job at some point and it has stuck with me.  What struck me is that we are less than two weeks from election day, and I do not even know what is on the ballot.  But, I thought, who cares about off-year elections?  What difference does it make?

And I found that I knew the answer to the second question; maybe the answer to the first is that you care, or at least you should.

MENDHAM, NJ - NOVEMBER 05: Election workers stand at a polling center in the Mendham Township Fire Department on November 05, 2013 in Mendham, New Jersey. Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic challenger Barbara Buono are the top contenders for governor seat but there are six other independent or third party candidates also running: William Araujo, Jeff Boss, Kenneth Kaplan, Diane Sare, Hank Schroeder and Steven Welzer. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
MENDHAM, NJ – NOVEMBER 05: Election workers stand at a polling center in the Mendham Township Fire Department on November 05, 2013 in Mendham, New Jersey. Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic challenger Barbara Buono are the top contenders for governor seat but there are six other independent or third party candidates also running: William Araujo, Jeff Boss, Kenneth Kaplan, Diane Sare, Hank Schroeder and Steven Welzer. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

Look for a moment at the field of Presidential candidates for next year’s election.  The Republican field has been very crowded, but what is particularly interesting is the number of young candidates in it.  Marco Rubio, who has a good chance of if not winning the nomination being tapped for Vice President, is forty-four years old.  Bobby Jindal is the same age, and Ted Cruz, Tea Party favorite, is only a few months younger.  Certainly there are older candidates in the race.  Current frontrunner Donald Trump is sixty-nine, Ben Carson sixty-four, and Carly Fiorina 61 (but note that none of these candidates have previously held political office).  But Rand Paul is only fifty-two and Chris Christie fifty-three.

Now look at the Democrats.  We have a serious race between sixty-nine year old Hillary Clinton and seventy-four year old Bernie Sanders.  Of the other candidates who were in the race, Jim Webb is sixty-nine, Lincoln Chafee (who recently dropped out of the race) is sixty-two, and the youngest of the batch, at fifty-two, is Martin O’Malley.  The only other “young” candidate, not even known to most voters, is law professor Larry Lessig, at fifty-four.  The two candidates people hoped would enter the race are also older, Elizabeth Warren at sixty-six and Joe Biden at seventy-three.

It is a sad showing for a party that claims to be the party of the young.  Of course, its current leader, President Barrack Obama, is “only” fifty-four, but there are no young candidates in this race.

It may be that younger candidates are letting their elders go first, and there is some wisdom in electing the more experienced (although not usually the wisdom of the Democratic party, who with Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Obama went for the younger leader).  There are promising young Democrats, such as New Jersey Freshman Senator Cory Booker.  However, they are seriously outnumbered.  Republicans currently hold majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, but in some ways more importantly they hold the majority of state executives and the majority of state legislative houses.  That means there are more young Republicans coming up through the ranks than there are young Democrats.

Of course, that does not much bother me.  The Democrats have taken many positions which in my opinion range from untenable to heinous (although they hold some positions with which I agree).  That the Republicans dominate politics is a good thing, to my mind.  It is those of you who support the Democrats who need to put Democrats in those offices–because most national politicians started as state politicians, and most state politicians started as county and local politicians, and if you expect to have electable Presidential candidates in the future you must have mayors and freeholders and state legislators in the present.  As it happens, the demographic that perceives the importance of being involved in local political races happens to lean very conservative, and so puts Republicans in those positions during off-year elections.  The Democrats know this; they just have no solution for it.

So now that I’ve told the Democrats what they need to do for long-term success, Republicans also need to be told:  if you are going to keep this grassroots strength, you have to continue to overmatch the Democrats at the local level.  Your vote matters, because even if you are not all that interested in what the next mayor is going to do in your town, or how the county freeholders are going to manage the budget, putting Republicans in those offices keeps you on the road to controlling the future–not to mention that there are still some state legislatures and executive houses you do not hold, still enough Democrats in office to thwart Republican policies in many places.  Local and county offices are the recruiting grounds for state officials, and state government is the springboard to national government, yet also what local, county, and state governments do on the lower levels matters in advancing or impeding party policies.  Our beleagured Democratic President can advance no policies against his opposing Republican Congress, but even when the Democrats controlled national government completely, they often found policies thwarted by Republican state governments.

So now you know why you should vote.  I am working on an article which hopefully will help New Jersey voters with the election, so keep watching this site.

I have previously published quite a few articles about voting.  Among the more relevant, see Election Law, Re-election Incongruity, Polarization, and the article sections Voting in the New Jersey 2014 Congressional Primary and Election Day:  Time to Vote.

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Bible and Theology, Elections, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning

#10: The Unimportance of Facts

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #10, on the subject of The Unimportance of Facts.

img0010Debate

In connection with the recent Presidential debates, one columnist bemoaned the issue that candidates often would make statements which in the aftermath of the debate political junkies who read sites such as Politifact would learn were inaccurate, misleading, or simply untrue.  He speculated that voters did not care about facts “because they don’t encounter enough of them.”  I considered that, but immediately thought that there might be another reason.

Of course, we have all heard the quip, “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts,” and while no one ever says that of himself (and many attribute it to those with whom they disagree), it is a true description of the attitude some people have.  I prefer, however, to think a bit more highly of people.  It is a failing of those of us who are intelligent that we tend to assume others are also intelligent, and sometimes become frustrated when they demonstrate otherwise, yet I find that if you treat others as if they were reasonably intelligent, and if you assume they have some intellectual integrity, they frequently rise to your expectations.  That is to say, most people base opinions on what they believe to be the truth.  I think the problem lies elsewhere.

In discussing freedom of expression we mentioned the popular axiom History is written by the winners.  We noted then that it was not outside the realm of possibility that Holocaust deniers could so shift public belief that the Holocaust itself might become one of those bits of history no one believes ever really happened.  That attitude, though, has come to permeate all of culture, all of education.  We are on some level taught that there are no facts, or at least no reliable facts.  One cannot know anything with certainty.  Eyewitness testimony is unreliable.  Media is biased.  People who want to tell you something have an agenda, an objective they wish to achieve by the telling, and scientists are not above this.  Evolution might be an atheistic deception, global warming might be an environmentalist scare tactic, intelligent design might be an effort to infect pure science with religious nonsense, the Bible might have been written by the church centuries after the time it purports to report, or edited to tell the version of events the priesthood wanted told, and the list is endless.  When I was young the world still had facts, and still respected them, and even when you did not know what the facts were you knew that facts existed and believed that they were ultimately discoverable.  It was said, The Truth Will Out, meaning that facts could not be kept secret forever.  Now we have conspiracies and conspiracy theories, spin doctors and media manipulators, textbook editors and politically correct speech enforcers–thought police of all types working to ensure that what you believe to be the truth fits their agenda.  Further, we are fully aware of this aspect of our reality.  As a result, we do not really believe what we believe, not in the sense that we think it might be true.  We believe it because it is useful and connects us to people who believe as we believe.  We are taught to believe concepts that have no basis in facts, and to be suspicious of any data claiming to be factual that is contrary to those concepts.  Whether it is the lie that there is no correlation between the number of guns in an area and the amount of gun violence, or the lie that gun free zones are safer places that would never be targeted by mass murderers, we accept the statements that fit our conceptions and reject the facts that are awkward, and never worry about whether any supposed fact is true, because facts are not about being true but about supporting already established convictions.

Voters are not interested in the facts because the facts are irrelevant, and whether any alleged fact will be regarded true depends on who you ask.  It not being possible to know the truth of such matters, seeking the truth on them becomes foolish.  For the voter, what matters is whether the candidate believes what the voter believes, not whether any of it is factually true.  The only truth that matters in today’s world is the subjective truth, the opinion of the one who believes it.  Reality is irrelevant.  We, as a society, have been taught and have embraced the lie that there is no truth, or if there is, it is completely undiscoverable.

That, sadly, is why facts are not important in the debates.

Many of the issues brushed in this discussion are discussed in more detail on pages in the law and politics section of this website; see Articles on Law and Politics for a list.

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Law and Politics

#9: Abolition

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #9, on the subject of Abolition.

In the abortion debate, the argument against restrictions and regulations of this medical procedure is that they rob women of autonomous control over their own bodies, that they are, in a word, a form of slavery.  Anti-abortionists are portrayed as oppressing women, stripping them of their rights to make decisions about their own bodies, forcing them to bear children and then to be responsible for those children, whether raising them or surrendering them to be raised by someone else.  In the words of Shakespeare’s Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), “The world must be peopled.”  That, though, does not mean we can enslave women to do the job, whatever Japan’s Liberal Democrats think.

The second statement made is that conservatives claim to care about such children up to the moment they are born, and then all such concern ceases.  Indeed, conservatives are portrayed as callous haters who would prevent a woman from receiving the medical attention she needs to remove a parasite but then do nothing to aid her in the pregnancy or thereafter.

The second answer to this is that this is not actually true.  I have worked with a “Crisis Pregnancy Center”, in the efforts to found and launch it both by lending such meager labor assistance as I could to making the offices functional and in training the first batch of staff and counselors.  Everyone with whom I worked was there to make it possible for women and girls with unexpected pregnancies to carry their babies to term and see to their subsequent care.  That included obstetrical exams and services, teaching in infant and child care, the provision of furniture and clothing and formula and diapers, help with social services, contacts with adoption agencies, counseling concerning the benefits and disadvantages of raising a child versus releasing it for adoption, and more.  There are conservatives on the ground doing exactly what it is charged they are not doing.

However, there is a first answer, and this mention of slavery brought it to my attention.  In the nineteenth century, abolitionists, mostly in the north, wanted to free the slaves.

img0009Slaves

In retrospect, we know that this emancipation was expensive on every level, with economic and social costs we perhaps are still paying.  In my mind’s ear I can hear the slavery party arguing that northerners want to free the slaves, but don’t want to commit to taking care of them once they are free.  I do not know whether that was true; none of us were there.  What I do know is that the fact (if it was a fact) that abolitionists made no commitment to caring for the freed blacks was a very poor argument against freeing them.  They needed to be helped in rising from poverty, at least in having obstacles removed, but whether or not that was going to happen they first needed to be freed.  So, too, children need to be helped, fed and clothed and of course loved and taught, and mothers need the support of fathers, family, community, nation, and churches, to see that their “unwanted” children are provided with that care.  First, though, they need to be protected from the oppression of having life stripped from them before their breathing has shifted from amniotic fluid to air.  Even if it were true that the people who want to protect their lives before they emerge into the world make no commitment to assisting those lives beyond that moment, to kill them before that emergence on that basis would still be as wrong as, more wrong than, to refuse to free the slaves because no one would help them once they were freed.  Our obligation to help the born is a problem, but it is a separate problem from whether to protect the lives of the unborn.  That freeing the slaves proved to mean economic and social costs thrust upon society for generations to follow was never and would not have been a good argument against freeing the slaves.

Yes, just as it was necessary for those who favored ending the enslavement of the black people also to commit to helping those people integrate into American society, it is necessary for those who favor ending the slaughter of the unborn to commit to helping the born rise to share the prosperity of the nation.  However, just as an unwillingness to make that commitment was not a good excuse not to free the slaves, neither is the uncertainty of our commitment to helping children a valid excuse for continuing to kill them unborn.

In addition to the above-linked piece Liberal Democrats Offend Women Again in the page Discrimination, there are also several related points raised in Miscellaneous Marriage Law Issues, particularly in the sections Births and On Negative Population Growth.  A connection between slavery and abortion was also suggested in Was John Brown a Hero or a Villain?  See also mark Joseph “young” web log entries with the same “tags” by following the links.

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Law and Politics, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#8: Open Letter to the Editors of The Examiner

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #8, on the subject of Open Letter to the Editors of The Examiner.

I have not actually told the editors of The Examiner that I am not writing for them anymore.  I am not certain that they care; I am not certain that they will ever even notice.  However, I have some hope that as I explain it to you, my readers, they might hear about it and learn something from it.  In my defense, part of the reason I have not told them is that it has become incredibly difficult to converse with them–communication in their direction seems never to reach anyone, or at least not to get anything like a suitable reply.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

img0008Examiner

Let’s start by saying that I have worked with quite a few editors over the years, on my books and on articles submitted to various websites.  Some of them have treated my work in a perfunctory way, that is, glancing over it and publishing it.  Some have made what they thought were corrections and then published without checking with me–I have tried to make a point of informing editors that I expect final approval of anything that bears my name, because I have had some change grammatically correct text they did not understand to grammatically incorrect text that did not say what I meant.  The best editors, honestly, are those who tear apart what I write and give me detailed feedback, then explain and interact until we agree on a final text.

I started at The Examiner in the middle of 2009.  Animator and illustrator Jim Denaxas pointed me that direction, suggesting that the popular Temporal Anomalies materials might earn a paycheck there, so I contacted them and was almost immediately given the title Time Travel Films Examiner.  At that time, it seemed that the editorial system amounted to a writer wrote, published, and promoted his articles, and if the editors got around to reading them they would sometimes push an article to the front page for extra attention, sometimes pull an article and send a message to the writer.  I never had the latter happen; I only recall the former occurring once.  In any case, it was evident that our remuneration was dependent upon readership, and our readership was dependent upon self-promotion; but the turnaround was fast, as one could post an article and promote it immediately.

At some point the process got a bit more complicated, because it was strongly recommended that we begin using Pinterest to promote our articles.  I was already using Facebook and MySpace, but Pinterest meant having images in the articles.  They provided access to Getty Images, but this was only good for national and international news and major entertainment events.  For a writer covering time travel movies, there was nothing there.  I also was given the title New Jersey Political Buzz Examiner in 2012, so I could publish some work on the “Birther” issue, and the Getty images were a bit more useful for that as long as the coverage was national–but there were never available photos of, for example, the candidates running against the incumbent governor and senator.  The writing process just got more difficult, because I had to hunt for pictures.  I was largely dependent on promotional photos for a lot of my material.  (It got a bit more complicated when they changed the Getty Image system:  originally it was possible to search for photos in advance of publication at my leisure, but the altered system made finding the image part of the publishing process, an added complication.)

It should be noted that this effort was bringing me pennies a day.  It should also be noted that I was alway in the top quarter in both of my categories, and frequently in the top ten percent, so it wasn’t as if most writers were making more than I.  I put in a lot of time for a very little money, and it was not increasing significantly.  Of course, I had written many things for no money, so this was better.

The problem occurred this year, 2015, because someone at The Examiner thought they ought to tighten the editorial process.  That’s fine; they have the right to improve quality that way.  I think they recognized the inconvenience, because they promised quick turnaround–the inconvenience, obviously, was that now when an author published an article, he had to wait perhaps half an hour to an hour to learn whether it had been approved, and he could not promote it before that.  Previously when an article was submitted, it appeared immediately, and the author was provided with automated systems to push it onto Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn.  Now, for that few cents a day, he had to waste time waiting for approval.

That might not have been too egregious, but the editorial process itself was a shambles.

The first glitch I hit arose because I had begun republishing articles from M. J. Young Net to The Examiner.  To do this, I had to serialize them, and I ran them as weekly posts on different days of the week from my regular posts.  Abruptly I was notified that the third article in a series (for which the first two had posted and their were two more to come) could not be published because I was not permitted to publish material from some other web site.  Of course, I could not well publish the fourth part without the third, and since I was doing both law and time travel materials it put both in question, but my original agreement with The Examiner stated that I owned the articles and could publish them elsewhere, so there was no logic to an objection that I could not publish articles at The Examiner that I owned but had previously published elsewhere.  I sent a message to attempt to get an answer, and the only answer I got was that someone apparently had changed his mind and restored the article before the person I contacted looked at it–but it took over a week to get that answer.

A few days later I published another “republished” article.  I had been putting an opening paragraph in italics introducing the articles and the fact that they had been previously published but were now being edited for serialization.  I had done this with every such article to this point–but this time I got blocked with a note that said I overused italics.  I could not help wondering whether the editor had even read the article, but with some grumbling to myself that it was going to create an inconsistent appearance I removed the italics from the opening paragraphs and resubmitted it.  A few hours later I received a notice that said they were not certain I had permission to use the image.

I don’t know whether I had permission to use the image; it was a movie poster, published for promotional purposes, so I’m assuming the movie producers wanted it circulated.  I can understand blocking the use of an image if it might not be a legitimate use (after all, that Image A.S.C.A.P. proposal has not been adopted).  My objection is that they should have said that on the first submission–I’ve already put several hours into what should be a ten minute publishing process, and they want me to put several more hours into it.  It is one thing if in fixing one part of an article you break something else; it is entirely different if the editor is going to raise one objection at a time, over the course of what can turn into hours or even days.  This is supposed to be published at the speed of Internet News.  It is not supposed to take me all day to earn those few pennies.

So I wish The Examiner and its editors and its remaining writers well, but am removing my articles from their publication.  After all, after having refused to publish one of my articles they had the nerve to remind me that if I don’t publish them often enough I don’t get paid for traffic to the old ones, and I don’t see any equity in allowing them to profit from my old work when they put up such obstacles to the new and failed to provide a means for two-way communication between the writers and the editors.

The Examiner materials have now all been relocated to Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies and to the law section of M. J. Young Net.

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Law and Politics

#7: The Most Persecuted Minority

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #7, on the subject of The Most Persecuted Minority.

Around the world, many groups of people are being deprived of basic human rights–

img0007Turkish

Persecuted, driven from safe homes, their lives counted as worth less than animals, less than livestock.

One group in particular faces death,

img0007Iraqi

daily, at the hands of those who ought to be there to defend and help them.

Our hands.

Yet these helpless, homeless, defenseless people are deprived of rights,

img0007hunger

put to death without a trial.

Routinely.  Uncaringly.

Even in America.

As if they were not human at all.  As if they were livestock, or pests, or parasites.

They are the unborn.  They are being exterminated.

img0007Ultrasound

Defend the rights of the most helpless minority.  You were once one of them.

This article is perhaps a response to my own article, The Republican Dilemma, in which I suggest that Republicans need to create ads which explain and defend Republican/conservative positions that will make sense to people not already holding those views.  This is a suggested model for one such ad, a sixty-second television spot.

Earlier M. J. Young Net articles addressing abortion include Was John Brown a Hero or a Villain? and Professor Robert Lipkin, the Concert Violinist, and Abortion.  Also see Miscellaneous Marriage Law Issues:  Births and Miscellaneous Marriage Law Issues:  On Negative Population Growth, incidentally related topics.

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Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

MJY Blog Entry #0006: Terminator Genisys Quick Temporal Survey

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #0006, on the subject of Terminator Genisys Quick Temporal Survey.

For years I have been producing complex analyses of time travel movies, and I expect to continue to do so as the Patreon campaign continues to grow and provide support for all of this (hint-hint).  Such an analysis requires that I obtain a recorded copy of the movie and watch it several times with pen and paper in hand, then carefully unravel it, going back to the recording to check details.  On the other hand, in recent years I have also taken the opportunity to watch movies during their theatrical runs and then given a short synopsis of the time travel problems pending a fuller analysis when the video would become available.  When I left The Examiner and brought all that material back here, those “quick temporal surveys” became the first parts of their respective articles, first with Men in Black III, followed later by Free Birds, About Time, X-Men:  Days of Future Past, and Edge of Tomorrow.  That was then driven in part by the various needs, one, to publish something every week, two, to be a solid source of current information on time travel movies, and three, to keep articles short for the format there.  Only one of those reasons is still applicable, but under the present circumstance, it seems appropriate to do something of the same thing:  to publish a Quick Temporal Survey of Terminator Genisys.

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Those circumstances, for what it’s worth, include that I have seen the movie; I must thank Bryan for buying a ticket for me so I could catch it in the theatre.  As often mentioned, it is not possible to take notes during a theatrical viewing, and even less possible to pause the film and back it up to check something that was unclear.  However, it was possible for me to make an audio recording of the film, and I was working on notes from that audio recording in beginning an analysis.  That was put on hold by the move:  I was not going to publish again at The Examiner, and I needed time to move all of that material here.  Before that task was completed, one of my readers dropped a note promising to ship me a copy of the DVD as soon as it is released, and so the work has been put on hold pending receipt of that DVD.  Meanwhile, there is much that I could say–I had already drafted ten parts and had many more problems to address–and I have access to two other time travel films which I might be able to analyze in the interim, so in view of that I’m going to take this opportunity to give you first impressions of the latest entry in the classic series.

I am terribly disappointed.

Oh, it was a wonderfully entertaining film, with high marks for action, decent marks for plot and character.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.  Further, I am accustomed to saying of a time travel film that it was a temporal disaster.  The problem here, though, is that it is repeated temporal disasters, completely inexplicable events leading to insoluble problems.  As a time travel story, it does not, cannot, work under any known theory of time.

When I first watched Terminator 3:  Rise of the Machines, John Cross (who did the analysis of The Final Countdown) very nearly begged me to keep at it until I found a solution–and I did.  I would like to say that there is hope that a solution might be found for this movie, but there is none.  Some of the problems can be solved by assuming certain sets of events, but these very events make solutions to other problems impossible.  Meanwhile, there are two major glaring errors that destroy it entirely.

The second of those was undoubtedly the result of an effort to move the franchise into the twenty teens:  Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese have traveled forward to 2017 to stop the launch of SkyNet at this new later date, and so now they will give birth to John Conner in this new timeframe, and the battle will continue in our present instead of in the past.  That, though, means that John Conner was not conceived in 1984, and all of those histories in which SkyNet sent Terminators back to kill him (or anyone else connected to him) have been undone.  Yet at least one of those histories is essential for the story as we know it, in which John Conner has sent Kyle Reese back to protect Sarah in 1984 because that is the destination of the first Terminator.  Without that, the entire franchise collapses.  It does not matter if John Conner is born thirty some years later; that’s too late to make any difference whatsoever.

The first is bigger, but it’s a bit more difficult to see.  However, if you have been following our series from the beginning you know that we always said that Cyberdyne was not the original creator of SkyNet, that someone else originally launched it at a later date, and the fact that the T-800 was destroyed in Cyberdyne’s facility gave them the parts that gave them the edge to replace the original SkyNet with their own earlier version.  Terminator 3 confirmed that analysis, as the United States Air Force Autonomous Weapons Division launched a SkyNet that was not a Cyberdyne-type hardware mainframe but a software solution that turned the Internet into a hostile artificial intelligence.  Thus we know that when Sarah Conner prevented Cyberdyne from launching SkyNet in Terminator 2 she restored the original launch date.

The problem should be obvious at this point.  Sarah, working with Pops, has prevented Cyberdyne from obtaining parts from a Terminator, and so prevented the early launch date; that means that SkyNet comes online at the later date, the date of Terminator 3.  Nothing Sarah does, nothing Kyle does, nothing Pops does, and nothing SkyNet does, will prevent that launch.  Note, too, that (as we observed) the T-X sent back in Terminator 3 does nothing to cause the launch of SkyNet; it only helps activate and control the other autonomous weapons.

That means by the time Sarah and Kyle arrive in 2017, SkyNet will have been functional for a decade, Kyle’s home will have long been destroyed, and nothing they find in that time can exist then.

They could have scrapped the entire story and started over with new dates, new machines, new people; they wanted Kyle Reese and Sarah and John Conner (although now I expect he will be John Reese).  To get there, they needed to find a way to intervene in the lives of General Brewster and the Autonomous Weapons Division so that that version of SkyNet would never launch.  They failed.

There is so much more wrong with this story, but this is already longer than I intended, so hopefully it is enough to whet your appetite for a fuller analysis once that DVD arrives.

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Law and Politics

MJY Blog Entry #0005: An Image A.S.C.A.P.

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #0005, on the subject of An Image A.S.C.A.P..

At one time, if you wanted to hear music, you had very few options.  You could learn to make your own, have family or friends perform for you, attend a concert (either buying a ticket or attending one paid for by a government or arts patron), or hire musicians to provide it.  Technology changed that drastically, beginning with Thomas Alva Edison’s discovery that audio waves could be transformed into physical etchings and recreated as audio waves–the beginning of recorded music, the analog record.  At that point you could buy a Victrola and purchase originally cylinders and later disks on which musicians had recorded their performances, and you could listen to them whenever you wished.  (There were previously of course music boxes which provided a much narrower choice of songs and lower quality of tone, and player pianos and orchestrions, which were far more expensive and demanding to operate.  Recorded music was a game changer, and these others are now novelties.)  Musicians who once made money only by live performances now could make money by selling their performances to record manufacturers so that they could be heard by people who never saw them.

The game changed again with the advent of radio.  It was now possible for the operator of a radio station or radio network to play someone’s music for audiences which quickly went from hundreds to hundreds of thousands.  At first the Federal Communications Commission frowned on such stations playing pre-recorded music, and so music was mostly live concerts–but often such live concerts were also recorded and replayed later, so it was becoming a moot point.  Now a musician could be heard by many people from the sale of a single record–but the sale of a single record would never support the artist for even one day, and he could not produce enough records in a day to do that.  It was agreed that a radio station who played a recording by an artist owed that artist–and indeed, also owed the composer and the publisher–royalties under copyright law.  However, as the number of radio stations burgeoned and the number of available recorded songs multiplied, that was going to be a prohibitive issue.

A solution was found.  The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers came into existence.  Now a musician simply registered his recording with the society, and the society negotiated with radio stations to collect royalties for airplay of songs.  The theory is that every time a radio station plays your song, you split a penny with several other people who also get paid (like your record company and, actually, A.S.C.A.P. itself).  Of course, it was not then possible for anyone to count how many times every song was played on every radio station, but A.S.C.A.P. had a simple solution.  Every week some sample group of radio stations–a different sample group each week–writes down every song it plays, and A.S.C.A.P. compiles these lists and extrapolates from them how many times each song was played on all radio stations in the nation.  Every radio station then pays a license fee to A.S.C.A.P. (there are numerous factors determining how much is paid, largely based on how many people are likely to hear it), and that money gets paid to the musicians.

The system has expanded over the years.  Today churches who wish to sing songs that are not in their hymnals without buying sheet music for everyone buy a license to print or display songs for use in services, and the composers, authors, and sometimes performers of those songs are compensated from that.  It certainly has been taxed by the development of file sharing and the Internet, but thus far it has managed to expand to meet the changing times.

I am going to suggest that it expand a bit more, or perhaps that it be imitated.

img0005camera

One of the problems on the Internet is that there are a lot of pictures–“images”, whether photos or computer drawings or scans of artwork–and that it is extremely simple to copy an image and use it somewhere else.  For most of us, that’s not a big deal–what little artwork might be labeled mine is of meager quality.  We would object to our personal photos being used in some corporate advertising campaign, but probably wouldn’t think twice about someone using something we drew somewhere else.  In fact, we frequently post and repost probably thousands of images per day on Facebook, knowing that they are gone beyond our control and we will never be compensated for any work we invested in them.  However, there are people who are dependent on being able to sell their images–photographers, artists, animators–and when we “steal” their work we are robbing them.  Often, though, we have no way of knowing whether any particular image we encounter is free to use as is, free to use in other ways, or something that requires the purchase of a license.

It might be argued that in a world in which everyone carries a digital camera in his pocket there is no longer a place or a need for professional photographers.  When was the last wedding you attended at which “a friend of the bride” did not shoot the pictures?  Photographers may be a profession of the past.

That is not necessarily true.  We do not get many photos from tourists visiting war zones, or admitted to peace talks or legislative sessions; for these, at least, we need professionals.  We probably need them for many other things.  If, though, we do not compensate them (not to mention others in the visual arts) for their work, they will be forced to cease doing it.  Yet it is a simple thing, a small thing, to use an image that you find floating out there on the web and float it a bit further, without any notion of its origin.  Is there a solution for this?

Certainly it is possible for photographers, artists, animators, and filmmakers to surf the web seeking their stolen images, and sue any offending web site; however, absent some clear indication that the thief was aware of the ownership status of the image, United States law only allows for an order to remove the image from the site.  Something more is needed for compensation.  Yet the tools all exist to launch something like A.S.C.A.P. for artists and photographers.  We already have systems monitoring traffic to various sites, so we know how heavily any site is visited.  We have “spiders” crawling the web, and Google has demonstrated the ability to identify images by subject matter.  Digital signatures can be implanted in images that alter nothing visible but make the image recognizable to such a spider.  Let’s let people who create such images sign their work digitally.  Then every company that provides web site hosting space can be required to buy a license on behalf of those whose sites are hosted on its servers, price based on server size and traffic volume, costs to be passed to those who build the sites.  Then if you happen to use a photo from an Associated Press photographer, or an image from an unfamiliar artist, or any other work on which someone holds rights, the system will count it and tell A.S.C.A.P. to compensate the owner.

It works for registered songs on the radio; why not for images?

I have previously written on copyright law, including Freedom of Expression:  Copyright and Intellectual Property.

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Law and Politics

#4: Just Do the Job

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #0004, on the subject of Just Do the Job.

There has been an increase in “self-driving” features on new automobiles.  The popular one is the car that parallel parks itself.  I remember that parallel parking was one of the most difficult parts of the driver road test, not only when I took it but for several of my sons.  People failed on that frequently, and here in New Jersey we joke that you know you’re from New Jersey if you could negotiate a traffic circle before you could parallel park.  What, though, if you take your road test in one of these self-parking cars, and when instructed to park you simply activate the car’s self-parking feature and remove your hands from the wheel so it can do what it is designed to do?  Would the instructor be obligated to pass you, or to fail you?

Digital Drivers License
Digital Drivers License

Bear in mind that most people who receive their standard passenger vehicle drivers license are unable to drive a standard transmission.  I was unable to do so when I got my license, and had only the vaguest notion of the purpose of that extra pedal.  I learned eventually, but know many people who drive all the time and cannot drive “stick”.  It is not really required that the driver is able to operate every motor vehicle in the class; only that he demonstrates the ability to drive one such vehicle.  Further, note that our laws creating opportunities for the handicapped permit them to obtain licenses operating vehicles specially equipped to accommodate their specific disabilities–hand controls for accelerator and brake for those without the use of their legs, for example.  In these United States, driving is for many a necessity, the only way to go to work, to obtain household supplies, to reach medical care.  We attempt to facilitate the right for as many persons as possible.

So if a young driving license candidate uses the automatic parallel park feature on his father’s new car, should he pass, or fail?  There is no evidence that he can park without that feature, and honestly the first car he buys for himself is unlikely to have it.  Yet he did manage to park the car, and there is no proof that he could not have done so without that “assist”.

Yet how far can this be permitted?  If a candidate arrives in a Google® self-driving car, so that all he has to do is give voice directions to an onboard computer which will operate the car using its sensor array, onboard maps, and computer uplink, does the fact that he can direct the car adequately to complete the driving test, without ever touching any of the controls himself, mean that he qualifies for a license?

What if he is blind?

Yes, certainly there are vision test requirements which must be met before one can take the road test, but if cars are made able to drive themselves with their own superior “vision” installed, that could well become “discriminatory”.

Now, imagine that you are a local motor vehicles agency test certifier:  it is your job to test candidates for driver licenses, and to sign a form certifying that this candidate is qualified for a license.  Remember, as I previously said concerning licenses:

…a license is government permission for someone to do something which would be illegal without a license….a license both permits specific categories of conduct and imposes certain responsibilities on the licensee….a license is a means by which the government regulates specific conduct, both to prevent conduct it wishes to discourage…and to encourage conduct it desires….

In the case of a license to drive, the signature of the test certifier asserts a belief by the certifier that the candidate is sufficiently skilled at driving as to be permitted to drive on the public roads unsupervised.  It is therefore the certification that the candidate is qualified for the license.

I have of late seen many Internet images with the suggestion that there are people who do not agree with their jobs, or did not expect that their jobs would require them to do certain things, but they do the jobs anyway because these are the jobs.  They are of course aimed at the Kentucky clerk who will not sign her name to marriage licenses for homosexuals (and to avoid being charged with discrimination, she will not sign her name to any marriage licenses).  Yet this is the heart of the problem:  the clerk does not believe that couples incapable of becoming biological parents can be certified as “married”.  It is her job to make that determination, the determination of whether a particular couple is qualified for such a license; the voters placed her in that position for that purpose (among others–it is not the entirety of her job).  She is undoubtedly expected to refuse such licenses to persons who are not qualified–incestuous relationships, bigamous marriages, applications from minors, cases of coercion or duress.  Her signature on the license is not “just doing her job”; it is certifying that she is persuaded that the applicants meet the requirements for marriage as she understands them.

That to some degree puts her in the same position as the motor vehicle road test supervisor who is asked to sign a form stating that this blind person has passed his road test because he happens to have come in a car capable of driving itself based on his verbal instructions.  It may be that this person has passed all the legal requirements technically, but in the opinion of the person required to make that certification the candidate is not qualified.

There are certainly arguments that Kim Davis should just sign the licenses, based on the fact that the candidates are fully qualified under the laws of her state; there are also arguments that she should not sign them, because under the constitution of State of Kentucky such marriages are unlawful.  This is what is called a conflict of laws issue, and technically the Supreme Court decision requires the State to amend its constitution to comply with the Court’s ruling–but until it does, that constitution is a valid basis to conclude that her personal assessment that these persons are not qualified for a license is also legally supported.  It is a weak argument, but in law it remains an argument made stronger by the fact that her oath of office (which I have not specifically read) undoubtedly requires her to “uphold” and/or “defend” that state constitution.

So stop saying that Kim Davis should just do her job.  She is doing her job:  she is assessing whether applicants are qualified to receive marriage licenses as she understands them.  She is refusing to certify licenses for persons she believes are not qualified, and so as not to be discriminatory about it she is also refusing to issue licenses to persons she might believe are qualified.  You might think that these people are qualified, but she does not, and she is the one who has to certify that they are.  It is, as she has said, her name on the form.

In addition to the articles linked in this post (Homosexual Marriage and Miscellaneous Marriage Law Issues), the author has also written In Defense of Marriage, Christianity, Homosexuality, and the E. L. C. A., and blog posts in both the Law and Politics and the Bible and Theology categories bearing the Homosexuality and Marriage content tags.

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