Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/author/sprouseb/page/27/)
Millennials, everyone knows, love walkable cities (except when they don’t) so it’s undoubtedly an excellent thing as Atlantic City pivots toward rebranding itself as a 24-hour live-work-play destination that we have invested tens of millions of dollars in pedestrian amenities and infrastructure.
Tanzie Youngblood finished fourth in the Atlantic County Dem Committee vote to pick a candidate for Congress, proof that nobody reads Time or Newsweek.
School children took to the streets yesterday to press for legislation that might make it marginally harder for deranged persons to murder them by the dozen with high-powered military equipment, a situation the school children have been forced into because the adults have all lost their goddamned minds. You can read about the walkouts in New Jersey here and here if you like. At Atlantic City High, the school day was interrupted by reports of a weapon outside the school. Turned out it was unfounded. Elsewhere in system-checks, new Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said he would “not stand in the way of rapidly advancing legislation that would strip his office of authority over the state’s troubled medical examiner system and move it to the health department,” S.P. Sullivan reports.
Our allegedly liberal media is pulling out its whiskers over Phil Murphy’s budget, which includes a proposed tax increase. You will remember this I’m sure the next time they want to give Amazon $5 billion. Or give a couple hundred million to a profitable power company. Speaking of PSE&G, that bill’s back!
Hi Route 40’ers,
I know a lot of you are probably sick of winter, but I personally can’t get enough of it, especially now that we’ve moved out of the beach house and into a place with functioning insulation. In realer news: Governor Murphy’s giving his first budget address, and the valuable NJ Spotlight has a list of things to look out for. The state association of police chiefs came out against marijuana legalization, and a #teen from Galloway is going to Hollywood on American Idol. Also, if you’re looking for a restaurant job, Elinor has an exclusive on why the Hard Rock’s opening might mean more restaurant jobs at Resorts. The guy who runs restaurants at Resorts thinks so anyway.
Sister Jean’s soup kitchen got broken into the other day and there’s a GoFundMe page to restock. As of press time, they were $5 short of their $1000 goal. (Update: Someone just gave them $100). Here are four stories on marijuana reform, arranged conveniently by Matt Friedman at the NJ PlayBook. In them:
* A health commissioner says alcohol’s more dangerous than marijuana.
Another Weather Event is upon us, and it’s the first big snow storm of the Murphy administration, Ryan Hutchins at the redoubtable New Jersey Playbook notes and adds, “You know, nothing can destroy an approval rating like a botched storm response.” That may be true at the state level. Not sure it’s true at the federal.
So, the Atlantic City Democratic Committee voted to file criminal charges against their mayor, Frank Gilliam, alleging he took a $10,000 donation to the ACDC and put it in his campaign account instead. I guess it makes sense you’d spend lots of time and money getting your party in office, then blow up the most high-profile member two months after he takes office.
Here is a story about Atlantic City’s mayor and its most famous political operative. See if you can make heads or tails of it. But I think Frank Gilliam has split with Craig Calloway. Or the other way around.
Happy Friday people. Stay dry. If you don’t know it’s raining, DM us and we’ll send us someone to let you out of the basement. In realer news:
Ryan Hutchins devotes the first graphs of today’s NJ PlayBook to the war between Phil Murphy and Steve Sweeney, who are fighting over something. Something important.